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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27062218">Wildflower Honey</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erato_Muse/pseuds/Erato_Muse'>Erato_Muse</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Dreams, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Not Canon Compliant, Pining, Quidditch, Romantic Comedy, Some angst, Teen Angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:28:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>76,911</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27062218</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erato_Muse/pseuds/Erato_Muse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts begins, and with it a new Quidditch season, a new third party in Ron's and Hermione's rocky road to romance, and Harry also begins to see Ginny Weasley in a new light. When Harry tells a thoughtless lie to cover up his feelings for Ginny, misunderstandings and miscommunication arise.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Hermione Granger/Dean Thomas, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Lavender Brown/Ron Weasley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurrerJean/gifts">CurrerJean</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I felt like a light, romantic story with a focus on Quidditch, that covers Harry's burgeoning feelings for Ginny without mentioning the words 'chest monster'. Let's make apples and honey a thing in Hinny-ville, lol :) ?</p>
    </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Find me on Tumblr <a href="https://erato-muse.tumblr.com/">Here</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“It’s our year, mate!” Ron said, with the distinctive overheated roar of someone talking about sports. Which meant by ‘our’ he meant Chudley Cannons fans, and this would be the year that they took the Premier League cup.<br/>
Harry had no sanguine hopes that 1996 A.D. would be any more auspicious or distinguished for the Chudley Cannons than any other in human history. The team had a curiously long run of bad luck: 104 years. Their slogan was also the best advisable course of action for those in the vicinity of Chudley, who deigned to hope that their locality would be associated with the Premier Quidditch League glory: ‘Cross Your Fingers and Hope for the Best.’<br/>
“We’ve got the best team in a century! Nothing can stop us!” Ron enthused, throwing his arms wide, while Harry looked over his shoulder, to make sure no one was snorting under their breaths at Ron’s enthusiasm.<br/>
“Yeah. It’s looking good. McGuffie’s gotten over that head cold, right?” Harry said.<br/>
Ron nodded vehemently, and said, “Yeah, and Clatterbuck’s all healed up from that broken clavicle.”<br/>
Harry grimaced at the idea, and said, “How’d that happen again? In that match against the Magpies, last year?”<br/>
“Funny enough, no, it was a mishap with a storm window during a hurricane in St. Kitt’s. Oh, and Drinkwater’s cleared to play, after being hit by that fruit basket delivery van at top speed-a Muggle wouldn’t have survived it,” Ron said. “Oy, I better get on duty, before Hermione boxes my ears.”<br/>
Harry nodded. Ron headed off to prefect duty, his parting salutation to Harry the crossed fingers of a Cannons diehard.<br/>
Once again, Harry looked round to see if they had been overheard and were being roasted with sniggers and giggles. Ron didn’t realize that his devotion to the most consistently bottom ranked team in their year was a bit of a running joke. But, Ron was so sensitive to criticism, as his family were so often collectively reviled or dismissed because of their poverty, liberal values about Muggles, and closeness to Dumbledore, who though widely admired was also thought of in some circles as a ‘crackpot’.<br/>
If anything, Harry thought maybe Ron felt a kinship with the Cannons for their 100 year losing streak. The fortunes of the Weasleys certainly mirrored theirs.’<br/>
“Harry, do you want to sign?” Ginny asked.<br/>
Harry’s response was a startled noise something like, “Ar-ugh,” and his feet did an impromptu tap dance as he lost his footing. He felt like a driver rushing to hit the breaks at the sudden advent of a deer in the middle of the road. Ginny had a way of coming out of nowhere, slipping silently into a corner of his presence, and when Harry emerged from a blink he was all but assaulted with her long hair like a torch’s flame waving in the hand of an Olympic runner, cinnamon freckles, and amber brown eyes that had a concentrated intensity.<br/>
When Ginny appeared in his field of vision, Harry felt an uncanny calm as he took a moment of respite to watch her, no matter what she happened to be doing: playing with Crookshanks or Arnold, talking to Hermione…then came the day he looked over, and noticed that she was kissing Dean Thomas. Harry’s first reaction had been a strangely ferocious outrage made up of parts…first, a certain feeling of rejection, and then a possessiveness that he was sure talk shows and self-help literature in the Muggle world would advise wasn’t healthy. He had also felt heatedly stirred: a part of him both admired and coveted the way one of Ginny’s small but toned legs, sheathed tightly in white Quidditch breeches was wrapped around Dean’s thigh, and the way she had been languidly shifting her pelvis and torso against him as she kissed him. It was clear by moving impressions in their mouths that it was a kiss with tongue, and Ginny’s whiskey brown eyes were closed as she did her part in it. She was lost in the kiss, as if  in a song, and a flash of impulses that bloomed suddenly in Harry occurred to him in the mere seconds he had spent watching-of ripping Dean off Ginny and decking him, of taking Dean’s place and kissing her, of pulling the silken flames of Ginny’s hair as he did so.<br/>
He’d been doing his best to stop thinking of her, because even the most innocent thoughts brought back those strange stirrings that more and more had been finding their way into the scenes of his dreams.<br/>
Ginny gave him her characteristic smirk, which was both hot and cold, scornful and teasing, at how startled he clearly was to see her. If she only knew, Harry thought, he was sure she would think him a base pervert.<br/>
“Will you sign?” she asked.<br/>
“Sign what?” Harry said.<br/>
“Petition. To get a television in to watch the Premier League matches this year,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Old Bony would never,” Cormac McClaggen scoffed. Harry hadn’t noticed him leaning about, either, but McClaggen certainly wasn’t popping up in his dreams.<br/>
“I hope you don’t mean Professor McGonagall,” Ginny said scornfully, looking at the tall, handsome, strongly built, blonde Keeper as if he was an utter waste of her time.<br/>
“Well, when’s she ever been the advocate of a good time?” he laughed arrogantly.<br/>
“I think she’d make an exception. She’s passionate about Gryffindor Quidditch, you know that,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Sure, sure, she’s supportive of the team, but to let us watch pro-Quidditch on a television? Let the old girl get over the shock that Western Union’s not how we communicate, anymore,” McClaggen said.<br/>
“You can put a message at the bottom of a Western Union wire, if you want to. I mean, it’s an option,” Harry said.<br/>
McClaggen looked at him as if he had gone slightly mad, and then his attention quickly went back to Ginny.<br/>
“How do you know that?” she asked Harry.<br/>
“Um…Muggle supermarkets? I must have overheard it. I used to help Aunt Petunia do the shopping, after school, when Dudley was at rugby practice,” Harry said.<br/>
He almost added that he had fondly hoped to work at Tesco, and gone through a period of being quite fascinated by the way cash drawers popped open, but was saved from this inanity by Ginny aiming a hard, fiery look at McClaggen, and saying,<br/>
“Well, I think we’ve got a chance of convincing her, if enough people sign the petition. Professor McGonagall was one of the best Quidditch players in Hogwarts history. She’s won more cups than you, collecting moss over there on the reserve list,” Ginny said.<br/>
Cormac gave a passive aggressive chortle, and said, “No need to sling mud, Weasley; I’ll sign your little autograph book, and we’ll see what Old Bony has to say about it.”<br/>
“Quit calling McGonagall that,” Harry said.<br/>
“Lighten up, Potter,” Cormac said, and with a pointed flourish, signed Ginny’s petition.<br/>
“There. I’ve been a good boy…how about a reward?” Cormac asked.<br/>
Ginny rolled her eyes. “What sort of reward?”<br/>
“You, me, Madam Puddifoot’s?” McClaggen asked, with a cocky drawl and disgusting tilt of his eyebrows which meant he didn’t expect a refusal.<br/>
Harry felt the wind go out of him. He felt outraged, but uniquely touched and violated, as if Cormac knew that he had been dreaming heatedly about Ginny, and was making a move to spite him. It was as if he had reached into Harry’s mind, and was trying to pluck her out of his dreams. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could Ginny laughed uproariously.<br/>
“When the Cannons win the cup, McClaggen,” she said.<br/>
Cormac shrugged. “Yeah, all right. You’re on,” he said.<br/>
She rolled her eyes one last time, and then strode away, her gray pleated uniform skirt swaying above the dimples of her shins, and her flaming red hair waving above the impression of her pert bottom beneath the gray wool skirt as she did so.<br/>
“Redheads,” Cormac chuckled. His eyes were hungry. He winked at Harry, and drifted away.<br/>
Harry realized that he hadn’t signed Ginny’s petition.</p><p>“I think she’s at the lake, studying with some friends. O.W.L.s, you know. To think, that was us, last year!” Hermione said, when Harry mentioned that he was looking for Ginny, to sign her petition.<br/>
“Personally, I think its just going to cause a lot of trouble, that you and me are going to have to sort out,” Ron said, to Hermione. “people fighting over what channel its going to be tuned to, and all that. Especially those little animals.”<br/>
“First and second years are not animals! And, naturally, with the advent of new technology in our midst, there will be new standards of etiquette that you and I will have to both devise and enforce. Are you saying you’re not up to it? Because if you aren’t, then last year you should have gone straight to Dumbledore’s office and told him to give the badge to someone with a little more…more…gumption!” Hermione fired, slamming big stack of catalogues on the table at which they’d been sitting by the fire in the common room.<br/>
“Oh, someone like Harry?!” Ron fired back.<br/>
Harry’s eyes widened. Besides Privet Drive and Snape’s dungeon, the place he least liked to be was in the middle of one of Ron’s and Hermione’s quarrels.<br/>
“Yes!” Hermione said passionately, and then looked confused at herself, and quickly said, “No! No, I don’t mean that Harry would have been a better prefect than you! What?”<br/>
“Don’t you ‘what’ me! You thought it was him, when the badge came with my letter, and you congratulated him, and everything!” Ron said.<br/>
“So, you’re angry for a mistake I made over a year ago!” Hermione demanded.<br/>
“That’s enough! Ron, you’re an excellent prefect, I’d be poxy at it. And Hermione…deep down, he knows what you meant. Just…not again? This is just like the Scabbers thing, all over again,” Harry said.<br/>
He usually just let them fight it out of their system, sitting silently in the blast radius, but after watching McClaggen ask Ginny out he felt agitated. It was like when he had lost a match to Cedric Diggory because of the Dementors by the pitch: when Harry woke up in the hospital wing and realized what had happened, he didn’t feel like himself, and he felt slow, clumsy, stupid, and ashamed.<br/>
Why hadn’t he known what McClaggen was about, and pre-empted him with a chivalrously no-nonsense comment? Why hadn’t he told McClaggen to get lost? Why hadn’t he…<br/>
‘What? Asked her out, yourself? Get real. Way to look like a pervert. The Weasleys wouldn’t want anything more to do with you,’ said a nudging little bit of his conscience.<br/>
“Oh, Harry, calm down,” Hermione said.<br/>
“Yeah, its all right,” Ron assured him, and pulled out a sport magazine. The cover article was apparently about an American Quodpot star, but Ron hastily turned the page to an article that his almost giddy smile testified he thought would be of interest to Harry:<br/>
“Chudley Cannons Report Longest Period Without Injuries in 80 Years”.<br/>
“I’m telling you, mate: there’s something in the water. They’re not going to let us down!” Ron said.<br/>
“Unlike every other year for the last century?” Hermione said.<br/>
Ron glared at her, heatedly, and said, “Oh, ye of little faith.”<br/>
“There’s faith and there’s fact,” Hermione said.<br/>
Harry pondered, whether  Ginny would really go out with McClaggen if the Cannons went the distance?’ and then felt dirty.<br/>
“I think I’m going to bed,” Harry said, and rose from his favourite chair.<br/>
“No! You can’t! Harry, this is our N.E.W.T. year: you must look over these apprenticeship applications!” Hermione said.<br/>
“These…what?” Harry asked, and Ron rolled his eyes.<br/>
“Like he needs those. We all know who’s going to take him on, after Hogwarts,” Ron said.<br/>
“Nothing is certain. Its always prudent to have a Plan B,” Hermione said.<br/>
“And, I bet, a plan c through z, too?” Ron said.<br/>
“At a certain point, actually,” Hermione said loftily, “You must put away planning, and act. And, in answer to your question, Harry, you didn’t think our education as wizards ended with Hogwarts, did you? By the end of seventh year, if we want to go further we have to secure an apprenticeship with an experienced, older wizard.”<br/>
“And, how are we supposed to meet them?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Wizards interested in training apprentices send their information to Hogwarts. You request the information from your Head of House,” Hermione said. She opened a catalogue whose cover read,<br/>
‘Wizards of North America’.<br/>
“Hang on: you’re thinking of going abroad? You didn’t say anything!” Ron said.<br/>
“I’ve always been curious about American wizards. I bandied about the idea of doing a cultural exchange program to study at Ilvermorny, for a bit,” Hermione said.<br/>
“What? When?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Well, before fourth year, but,  then there was the Tournament, and I couldn’t leave-” Hermione began, then interrupted herself before she said that she couldn’t leave Harry that year. She and Ron bickered regularly, but to bring up the year he had believed that Harry had put his own name in the Goblet of Fire would be to start a much more serious argument. She amended,<br/>
“I couldn’t just leave without seeing how it all turned out, you know.”<br/>
“I reckon. Do American wizards wear cowboy hats, and use pistols instead of wands?” Ron said. Harry and Hermione both laughed. She opened the catalogue, and Harry saw that it was rather like a cross between a telephone directory, and personal ads. Entries generally ran in the vein of,<br/>
“Obadiah Hedgepeth, experienced green warlock seeking a self-starting go getter who thinks outside the box and isn’t shy of dragon dung fertilizer. Grow your future in healthy soil!”<br/>
Or<br/>
“Do you see a future in Astrology? Contact Ostara Ashbaugh, Tarot witch, couple’s therapist, and event planner.” Hermione violently turned her page at that listing; she loathed Divination.<br/>
“Hmm,” Hermione said, weighing her options.<br/>
“They all sound like charlatans,” Ron said.<br/>
“Well, I don’t want to judge a whole continent by a few bum leads, Ronald,” Hermione said.<br/>
Ron shrugged, as if he could care less where Hermione went after school, which Harry knew was the furthest thing from the truth.<br/>
“Dumbledore’s sure to ask you, mate. I mean, he’s already giving you private lessons!” Ron said.<br/>
“Yeah, an extended episode of ‘Tom Riddle, This is Your Life’,” Harry grumbled. He’d rather thought that lessons with Dumbledore would be like his private lessons in the Patronus Charm with Lupin, or the D.A. with himself the only student rather than the de facto teacher.<br/>
Hermione’s eyes widened, and she shook her head as if warning him. Harry frowned incredulously, and then turned around to see Ginny staring at him with a raised flame orange eyebrow, at the mention of the name Tom Riddle.<br/>
“Tom? What about him? Is it that book? I knew it! It’s left over from when he was at Hogwarts, wasn’t it?” she said, sounding more alarmed than he’d ever heard her.<br/>
Something inside Harry squirmed pleasantly at the higher pitch her voice had taken, how she had abandoned her ‘I’m too cool for this’ act of scorn and cynical bemusement she used with other boys out of concern for him.<br/>
“Shut your gob, Gin! This is why we don’t tell you anything, you never could keep a secret!” Ron said.<br/>
Ginny’s eyes flared in outrage, and she opened her mouth to fire back at Ron, but Harry quickly stood up and put his hands on Ginny’s shoulders, looking into her eyes to calm her.<br/>
“No, no, its all right. The book is fine. Its just an old potions book,” Harry said. Her eyes were trained on his, and Harry watched as they settled, became less wide and less heated with fear, for him, Harry, and annoyance at Ron. They settled into a sea of amber, and he was so close to Ginny he could see her chest rise and fall beneath her gray wool school sweater. A frisson of heat passed between them, like a hot, stormy wind over the ocean.<br/>
Hermione raised one dark eyebrow, and cleared her throat, with a slight nod towards Harry. Harry, so used to taking cues from Hermione, got it instantly, and took his hands down Ginny’s shoulders. He made sure not to look at Ron, whom he was sure would be furious that he had so forwardly touched his sister.<br/>
“Oh, you’re looking at Apprenticeships? Are you going away?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“Harry’s not, obviously,” Ron said.<br/>
Ginny glared at him, and said, “Oh, I’m the one who can’t keep a secret? Get a clue, Ron.”<br/>
“I hadn’t even heard of apprenticeships, until right now,” Harry said. “I’m so behind.”<br/>
Ginny gave him the small but encouraging smile she had when she encouraged him to talk to Sirius, the year before, and said, “Why don’t you ask Lupin? He’d love to be your Master, I’m sure.”<br/>
“That’s a good idea, Harry! You two’ve always got on so well,” Hermione said.<br/>
“Look, I don’t want to drop a toad in the cauldron, but is Lupin even legally considered a wizard, anymore? That foul bitch Umbridge made all those new laws about werewolves last year, remember, Sirius told us that,” Ron said, and then took on a mortified look, as if he wanted to shove his words back into his mouth, chiefly the name of Harry’s dead godfather.<br/>
Harry felt as if the air around him was waving, like lines of heat on the horizon of a sweltering summer day. He shook it off, and shut the door, hard, on the feelings that rose at the mention of Sirius. He looked at Ginny. The firelight had settled in her hair, and gave it golden back light, the very color of the sunsets as Harry had imagined the tropical climes in which Sirius had hidden the year before he was forced to live in seclusion at Grimmauld Place.<br/>
Hermione looked sad, and admitted, “Oh, yes, you’re right. Well, Harry, I’m sure we’ll find someone suitable, for you.”<br/>
“Yeah, who wouldn’t want you as a student?” Ginny said.<br/>
“Snape,” Harry pointed out, and Hermione, Ginny, and Ron laughed. Ginny flushed a little, and Harry felt something rise in his stomach as the rosy red blush rose in her face, beneath the cinnamon freckles.<br/>
“Ginny, Harry wanted to sign your petition-do you have it with you?” Hermione remembered.<br/>
“Yup,” Ginny said, and pulled it out of her book satchel. “Sign here.”<br/>
“What brought this on, anyway? Do you know what television does to kids’ minds? They’ll be climbing the walls. It’ll be like that book ‘The Lord of the Flies,’” Ron said.<br/>
Hermione looked impressed, but said nothing. Ginny said coolly, “If they kill the prefects, I reckon.”<br/>
“I surely hope not!” Hermione all but shrieked.<br/>
Ginny laughed, a naughty look in her eye and about her mouth that reminded Harry vaguely of Fred, and said, “Hermione, calm down. I’m not trying to start a revolution, I just thought it would boost morale, especially for the younger kids. The ones who weren’t here during the Tournament, or Umbridge, even, but they know that everyone’s on edge about the war. I thought it would be nice for them to see some Quidditch, forget about it all for a bit. Going to the World Cup did me a lot of good. I finally felt like I had my own head to myself, again.”<br/>
Harry felt as if cold water had been poured down his back. With a jolt, he thought of telling Ginny that he had forgotten her possession by Riddle’s diary. But, it was only the year before, apparently, that she had stopped feeling Voldemort’s presence in her mind.<br/>
“Quidditch always helps,” Harry said, and instantly felt that his words had been paltry and ineffectual.<br/>
He was surprised when Ginny looked at him, and smiled. Her smile was a flaming arrow, that impaled him utterly.<br/>
“Yeah, it does,” she agreed. “Well, go ahead and sign: I’d hate for you and my brother to miss the Cannons.”<br/>
Ron either ignored her sarcasm, or was determined to ward away the jinx of her doubt with his usual enthusiasm for the surely doomed team. He stood up from his chair, and said,<br/>
“Its our year! Its gonna be our year!”<br/>
Ginny grimaced, and quickly retreated. Harry was no stranger to accusations, innuendo, and gossip, but with the universal acceptance of Voldemort’s return, the cloud of them that had oppressed his fifth year had lifted in his sixth. He now saw that he was in danger of a new threat: being assumed to be as big a Chudley Cannons fan as Ron. If there was to be a television in the Gryffindor Common room, Ron would undoubtedly be cheering for them with an almost defiant, certainly oblivious, gusto. Loyalty and friendship would compel Harry to do the same, but he certainly didn’t want Ginny watching him do it.</p><p> </p><p>Harry showered before bed, which was not customary on an evening he did not have Quidditch practice. He felt hesitant to face Ron, Ginny’s brother, and Dean, her boyfriend. Granted, he hadn’t asked her out in spite of their relationship the way McClaggen had, but he felt that he had done something much worse. No one knew that he was concealing these heated feelings about Ginny, whose brothers had always sheltered and encouraged him, whose parents treated him like a son every summer. He felt that he’d betrayed them, that he was a pervert, a liar…<br/>
He changed into his pyjamas in front of the sink, and made it across the hall to the room he had shared with the same boys since he was 11. He felt shy to fall asleep around them, now, unsure if he could control his dreams.<br/>
But, the day’s demands, the heavy homework, and the hearty, fortifying meals, at Hogwarts seemed designed to ensure that sleep would come, surely and thoroughly. Harry drifted off, and when he next woke he wasn’t at Hogwarts at all, anymore. He was in the spare bed he always slept in, in Ron’s room at the Burrough. He recognized it at once by the Chudley Cannons posters on the walls, the handmade quilts, and the occasional low baying of the ghoul in Ron’s closet.<br/>
Ginny sat on the end of his bed. The sunshine shining out of the window across from the bed backlit Ginny’s hair, her fair skin beneath her light brown freckles, and her whiskey brown, bright eyes.<br/>
Harry sat up, at once.<br/>
“Ginny?” he asked.<br/>
She smirked…that maddening smirk, and stretched…the way she did at Quidditch practice, putting her chest forward in her tight, red jumper…<br/>
“Did you know my mum makes honey?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“Honey?” Harry asked.<br/>
Ginny nodded. She was so close, her skin was burning bright, so was her hair, so were her eyes, she was every shade of bright…<br/>
Ginny produced a pale wedge of apple dripping with golden honey, the very color of her eyes when the firelight caught in them.<br/>
“They drink from the wildflowers. Its wildflower honey,” she said, leaning in, coming closer, closer, so that Harry could feel the warmth of her bright body mingling with the warmth of his body under the blankets. Her amber eyes didn’t leave his, and as she moved closer the light from the window behind her became brighter. The light swelled, pulsed, flared, and at the same moment that the crisp, cool, subtly sweet fruit and sticky, sweet honey touched the tip of  Harry’s tongue, the light behind Ginny erupted in a starburst.<br/>
Harry woke up. Someone had suddenly clicked on the light on their bedside table, and that was what had flooded his vision. He rubbed his eyes, reached for his glasses, and was vaguely aware of the sound of laughter.<br/>
“Mate, I don’t care if its Cindy Crawford herself you’re dreamin’ about, keep it down, yeah?” Seamus said. Ron, Dean, and even Neville all laughed.<br/>
“I wasn’t!” Harry insisted, but he knew that his sweaty, flushed face gave him away, and his friends were all looking at him bemusedly. He glanced at Ron, who asked,<br/>
“Was it Cho?”<br/>
“What? Um…no. Go back to sleep,” Harry said. Sweat and guilt clung to his skin.<br/>
 </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I didn’t…say anything, in my sleep, did I?” Harry asked, as they came down the stairs to the Gryffindor common room, on their way to breakfast in the Great Hall. <br/>“Something to the affect of ‘Urrgh….ahhh’; as if someone had pulled your tooth, and then given you a cold root beer, right after,” Ron said.<br/>Harry nodded, and said, “But, no names, right?” <br/>“What’s the big secret about you having a dirty dream about Cho Chang?” Ron said.<br/>Harry was presented with a unique dilemma. He couldn’t very well say that he’d dreamt about Ron’s baby sister, but he didn’t exactly want it to be known that he was dreaming about Cho, either. Boys did make lewd comments, and he didn’t want to throw that kind of attention at Cho from some idiot who thought it was a laugh. Harry had looked at girls’ faces when that sort of talk started, and they didn’t find it as funny as boys’ thought they did. The sort of girls who took it as a species of flirting were usually the sort like Ron’s girlfriend, Lavender-who were so caught up in a hyperfeminine world of bedside astrology and scrunchies, gossip and powdering their nose that everything boys said and did was the obscure and opaque ritual of a near-related but distinctly separate mammalian genus they just barely understood, anyway. <br/>Cho, whatever her faults or their misunderstandings, was no Lavender Brown, and would not like hearing that she had been the subject of a dirty dream.<br/>“It wasn’t Cho. It was…this girl I know in Surrey. A Muggle. A neighbor,” Harry lied.<br/>“Oh, Mrs. Figg, then?” Ron quipped, laughing at his own joke.<br/>“No!” Harry spluttered, and Ron asked, “Okay, what’s she like, then?”<br/>“You know…she’s…nice. She doesn’t talk much, but when she does, she’s really…funny. In this matter of fact way. She cuts to the chase, and she doesn’t put up with bullshit. And she loves sports. She plays…football. And she’s really good. And she has this long hair that’s like…fire. And these bright eyes…” Harry said.<br/>“Wow. I never heard you talk about Cho like this. Why don’t you ring her up on the fellytone sometime?” Ron said confidently, as if he was assured that this was part of Muggle courtship.<br/>“It’s not that simple. She’s…got a boyfriend. And…a lot of brothers,” Harry said.<br/>“That’s rough, mate. I guess love is rough,” Ron said. Harry felt a dashed hope that he hadn’t even realized was kindling; he was sort of hoping that Ron would have some advice. <br/>“ ‘If love be rough with you, be rough with love-prick love for pricking, and you’ll beat love down,’” Hermione greeted them at the bottom of the stairs, with a self-satisfied smile that meant she had just quoted something impressive, word-for-word.<br/>“Have you been Confunded?” Ron said, “What’s that gibberish?”<br/>“What I mean is, I couldn’t help but overhear your predicament, Harry, and I think if there’s someone you can’t get over, but there’s no immediate chance right now, you should see other people and get your mind off of it,” Hermione said. “And that, Ronald, was Shakespeare, not gibberish!”<br/>“Thanks, Hermione,” Harry said. <br/>“What’s her name, then, this Muggle?” Ron asked.<br/>“Umm…Tiffany,” Harry said, the face of a Muggle pop singer with red hair popping into his head.<br/>“Tiffany? Have they all got those funny names? ‘Tiffany’, ‘Courtney’, and so on?” Ron said. Hermione promptly punched his shoulder.<br/>“What?” Ron said. “Hermione’s a proper name for a witch! Its like the girl version of Hermes, isn’t it? There you go, nothing weird like, ‘Nancy’.”<br/>Hermione rolled her eyes.<br/>Harry was about to urge both of them to get down to breakfast when Seamus and Dean came in, urging onlookers out of their way as they carried a TV into the common room. Ginny walked behind them, looking pleased with herself, and the proceedings.<br/>“You got it done, after all, Weasley!” Seamus said. Dean, as men in love do, smiled proudly, counting his partner’s accomplishments as his own. Harry’s stomach did Carry Strug-worthy gymnastics. <br/>Ginny raised a fiery red eyebrow and said, “You doubted me, Finnigan?”<br/>“Me? No! I know you Weasleys are always up to something, and you usually pull if off!” Seamus said.<br/>Seamus, Dean, and Ginny laughed. Harry was stabbingly reminded of the picture of his parents and Sirius on his parents’ wedding day, the happy couple and their doting friend. Would that be Ginny, Dean, and Seamus, one day? <br/>“Gin, you didn’t clear this with me and Hermione!” Ron said. “we’re the prefects, and you should have talked it over with us before you brought this hazard into the common room.”<br/>“Leave me out of it, if you please,” Hermione said silkily, and opened her apprenticeship catalogue.<br/>“McGonagall seems all right with it, so I’d say she outranks you just a bit,” Ginny said coldly.<br/>“Well, she should have asked our input, too! And you stepped right over Harry, your Quidditch captain, too!” Ron said, his face going strawberry red.<br/>“Hmm, so I was supposed to clear my actions with you and Harry, two men who know best, is that right?” Ginny said with cutting sarcasm. <br/>Dean put a hand on her shoulder, and with a bemused little chuckle in his throat said, “Gin, you got it done, its all right now. Calm down.”<br/>Ginny flinched away from his hand and rounded on him with a heated glare, her light brown eyes shining dangerously, and barked, “Don’t tell me to calm down! You on his side, then?”<br/>“I’m not on any side, because its just not that serious! The kids get a treat, we all get to watch Quidditch, McGonagall cleared it-what’s to fight about?” Dean said.<br/>“The principle of the thing, Dean!” Ron said.<br/>“Bugger it,” he scoffed, and walked away.<br/>“DEAN!” Ginny fumed at his retreating form. <br/>Hermione came over to her side, and they walked up to the girls dormitory. </p>
<p>Ron complained about his sister all the way to breakfast, for which Dean, Ginny, and Hermione were all absent. Ginny, Ron informed Harry, had always been willful, rude, spoiled, and a terror when anyone dared to disagree with her, all her life. Harry nodded vaguely, stopping short of incriminatingly agreeing with Ron. However, as galled as he was that she hadn’t submitted to his authority as a prefect before getting McGonagall to allow the Gryffindors a television, when the subject of her impertinence was exhausted Ron whipped out the same wizard sports magazine he’d shown Harry the previous evening to look up the Wizarding World Network’s sports schedule.<br/>“Mate!” Ron shouted breathily, “Cannons vs. Bats, tomorrow at 7!”<br/>“Oh…great,” Harry said.<br/>“What d’you reckon their chances are?” Ron said, his blue eyes trained eagerly on Harry in a most plaintive, Dobby-esque way.<br/>‘A snowball’s, in Hell,’ Harry fought his lips every step of the way from saying, and instead said, “I’ve gotta get up to the owlery, post a letter.”<br/>“To Tiffany?” Ron said, raising his red eyebrows in such a way that Harry was reminded strongly of Ginny.<br/>“Erm, yeah,” Harry said, and stood, colliding with a body. Whoever he had bumped into was knocked promptly off their feet, and when Harry reached hastily to offer them a hand to help them up, he saw that it was Cho, who was rubbing her head.<br/>“Cho! Are you all right?” Harry said, and held out his hand.<br/>“Fine!” she said, rubbing her head, grimacing, and managing a shaky smile, all at the same time-her ability to multitask was quite astounding. Harry felt like an A1 dunce for bumping into her, and surprised to see her. He’d glimpsed her on the train, but they hadn’t spoken in months.<br/>She was as gorgeous as ever, skin the color of the flesh of a cleaved almond, eyes like a night sky dappled with bright stars, and long, glossy hair that drew the light to it and was so black it had an inky blue sheen. Like Ginny, her body was small, toned, and pert at her bosom and backside. Harry felt impaled by her beauty.<br/>“I…wanted to say good luck,” Cho said.<br/>“Oh, yeah, thanks,” Harry said, trying to sound natural…then he realized he had no idea what she meant, and added, “On what?”<br/>“I thought McGonagall would have told you, you are captain this year: first match of the year is Ravenclaw v. Gryffindor,” Cho said.<br/>Harry’s green eyes widened. <br/>Before he could react, Ron said, “Oy, Harry, weren’t you going to send Tiffany that letter?”<br/>Cho raised a black eyebrow. “Tiffany?”<br/>“Yeah, Harry’s girlfriend. They’ve got funny names, haven’t they, Muggles?” Ron said.<br/>“Oh. Well. Then that’s…erm, okay, yeah. See you around, Harry,” Cho said, and hurried off.<br/>Harry turned to look at Ron, who was giving him a thumbs-up, and said, “You’re welcome, mate.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry lay on his stomach on his bed, studying for Potions. Out of curiosity he scribbled in the margins of Advanced Potion Making,<br/>
‘Girls?’<br/>
The Half-Blood Prince had been so knowledgeable about everything else…maybe he had something to say on the subject of girls. Harry had never directly asked anyone. Who would be the appropriate party to ask, after all? Uncle Vernon? Dumbledore? Lupin?<br/>
Vernon would probably say, “The government should stop freaks like you from breeding!”<br/>
Harry couldn’t picture Dumbledore barefoot, let alone in a relationship with anyone.<br/>
As for Lupin, where would he even address such an inquiry? He was kind when they were in each other’s presence, but unlike Sirius he had made no moves to keep in touch outside of Hogwarts or Grimmauld Place.<br/>
Harry felt anticipation prickle the hair on his arms, and he nearly gasped when the words,<br/>
‘What about them?’ popped up in the Prince’s neat scrawl.<br/>
For the first time, Harry was afraid. Could this be Voldemort’s book, from his time as a student at Hogwarts? Could it be like his diary, somehow?<br/>
‘How do you talk to them?’ Harry asked.<br/>
‘In English? Unless they speak another language,’ the Prince wrote.<br/>
Harry laughed. Would Voldemort’s textbook make a joke? Harry wagered not, and felt much more comfortable.<br/>
‘What should I say?’ Harry wrote.<br/>
‘Don’t call her rude names,’ The Prince advised.<br/>
‘Besides that?’ Harry wrote.<br/>
He waited. He could  almost feel the Prince…thinking.<br/>
‘What’s her best subject? Maybe she’d like to study.’<br/>
Harry sighed. Well, of course a Potions genius, like whoever the Half Blood Prince was, would use their braininess in the pursuit of romance. Harry didn’t really consider himself clever-he certainly wasn’t Hermione, so he doubted the Prince’s trick would work for him. Then, he had a eureka moment, thinking back to Hermione saying that Ginny was studying for O.W.Ls as they had been the year before. Studying! Maybe he could go over Defense Against the Dark Arts, the one subject at which he was neither poxy nor bored stiff, with Ginny.<br/>
‘Thanks,’ Harry wrote, feeling much lighter in spirit than before, as he shut his book and changed into his Quidditch uniform, to head down to practice. </p><p> </p><p>Harry felt a bit of a pep talk was in order, since they were practicing for a match, and gathered the team in a huddle on the green grass of the pitch before they took to the air.<br/>
Peakes and Coote rested their weight on their Beaters’ bats. Ron kept getting distracted in the direction of the stands, where Lavender was already bouncing in her seat and cheering his name though no plays were being executed. Katie Bell looked intently at Harry, ready to take his words to heart, and Dean whispered something into Ginny’s small, shell shaped ear, holding the wildfire veil of her hair up with his hand. Ginny finger combed her hair out of her way and out of Dean’s grasp, as they shared flirty smiles, and Harry caught a whiff of the floral smell he’d caught off the vat of Amortentia in Slughorn’s class. Wildflowers, maybe…the words ‘Wildflower honey’ writhed like sea snakes in his memory.<br/>
“This weekend, we’re up against Ravenclaw,” he reminded them. “Ravenclaw are good fliers, and they have strong plays. Their Seeker, Cho Chang-”<br/>
“Needs an eye exam,” Peakes said.<br/>
“She-” Harry tried again.<br/>
“Hasn’t caught anything besides a cold in ages,” Coote said, earning laughs from everyone assembled.<br/>
“Cho’s a good Seeker, but its their Keeper we need to keep our eye on. Thaddeus Biggerstaff-” Harry began, but Peakes was still on the subject of Cho.<br/>
“Must be all the crying. What is she, mentally unstable?” he said.<br/>
“How would you like it if Voldemort murdered the person you love? Would you be all smiles? It’s a bloody miracle she can even walk onto this pitch-the maze was right here! Cedric Diggory died here!” Ginny said passionately, her eyes hard bits of amber, her mouth a firm pink line.<br/>
Peakes’ eyes widened, and then his shoulders and entire frame seemed to sink and get smaller.<br/>
“I was just joking!” he said peevishly.<br/>
“Yeah, girls are always an easy target, aren’t they?” Ginny said.<br/>
“Stop being a prat, Peakes,” Dean said.<br/>
“What’d you say?!” Peakes said.<br/>
“He said lay off my sister!” Ron shouted, marching in between Ginny and Peakes. Harry and Dean went for his arms as he seemed to lunge for Peakes.<br/>
“Everybody, calm down! We don’t have to badmouth the competition to feel good about ourselves! I don’t want to hear any more talk about how the other team plays, except when it comes to strategizing how to offset their game! Keep your head on your game,” Harry said firmly.<br/>
Dean was massaging Ginny’s shoulders, but, for the second time that Harry had noticed, she flinched out of his touch. Dean raised his eyebrows in consternation, sighed, then seemed to shake it off. </p><p> </p><p>“Can I have a word, Captain?” Ginny said, and the sarcastic emphasis she placed on the last word seemed to indicate that she didn’t think much of his leadership skills.<br/>
“Yeah, sure,” Harry said, and cocked his head towards the commentary box. Ginny swiftly jogged ahead of him, and he followed her up the rickety wooden stairs. It was torture threaded shame and self restraint as he tried not to watch the way her hair swayed, what little light there was playing on its silky red surface with a rippling smolder, and the way the flaps of the Quidditch robes parted as her legs flexed, revealing a peak of small, but round and perky buttocks in her tight, white Quiddtich breeches. Harry’s hands tingled as they resisted the urge to grab her about the waist, kiss her, hard the way Dean had, feel her body shift welcomingly against his, his fingers in her hair, his palms cradling and encircling her perky bottom…<br/>
They made it up to the commentary box. Harry had a bird’s eye view of the verdant pitch, the players below, and the spectator boxes.<br/>
“We’re not ready for Saturday. Not by a far cry,” Ginny said matter of factly, her arms folded.<br/>
“You’re just upset. Maybe we need a few minutes to cool down, but that’s okay. We’ll shake it off, and McGonagall never minds if practice runs long,” Harry said.<br/>
“Harry, we’ve got no group unity, can’t you see that? I can. In how we fly, how we score, how we get on at practice…good teams communicate, and move as a unit, and we’re just seven people on a pitch, not a unit. Not yet. I think we should trade places with Hufflepuff, against Slytherin. It’ll give us another week to practice, and get a rhythm,” Ginny said.<br/>
“No,” Harry said unequivocally.<br/>
Ginny raised an eyebrow, silently asking, ‘Why?’<br/>
“We’ve got a good team. Peakes and Coote are young, it was just sports talk, they know not to do it again,” Harry said. “There’s no issue. Not one so big we have to look like we’re trying to rig the Quidditch season to our best advantage.”<br/>
“Substitutions can be made. Flitwick and McGonagall won’t mind, or suspect you of anything like that,” Ginny said.<br/>
“And Snape?” Harry asked.<br/>
He could just hear that cold, drawling voice now, accusing him of wanting a chance to showboat like his arrogant father by making Gryffindor’s first match of the season against their greatest rival, his house.<br/>
“Wouldn’t be in a good mood if Merlin came back from the dead to give him an Order of Merlin-who cares what he thinks?” Ginny said.<br/>
“I care how we look, and it looks dodgy. I’m sorry, Gin, but no,” Harry said. “You and Peakes can learn to get along.”<br/>
Ginny turned strawberry red. “So, its my fault, then? You don’t care that he was having a go at Cho? You know why she cries all the time. Because of Cedric!”<br/>
The mention of Cedric’s name conjured the image of the vacant eyes of his dead body from Harry’s memory, and Harry’s heartbeat quickened and his breathing became uneven.<br/>
“I know! I don’t want to talk about Cedric!” he said.<br/>
When he saw the look on Ginny’s face, he knew that he had shouted, without meaning to. The world was becoming so loud, and his voice had risen to ward it off, the rising memories pelting him like pellets of frozen rain. He turned away from her, ashamed that he had gotten angry out of nowhere, like that. Then he felt something soft and warm on his shoulder. Ginny’s small, soft hand was tenderly coaxing him to look at her, to come back to her. Harry turned around, and looked down into her amber brown eyes.<br/>
Without words, he knew that she knew…that Cedric, and not wanting to talk about him, was why he couldn’t make it work with Cho, and how the memories assaulted him when a phrase, a sight or a sound triggered them.<br/>
“Okay,” she said.<br/>
Okay, the match with Ravenclaw should go ahead, okay, she would get along with Peakes…okay, she didn’t think he was a madman, or a monster. Harry wanted to fall into the look in her eyes, to pull it around him like a cloak. His gaze scanned Ginny’s cute, small, upturned nose dotted with cinnamon freckles, and pink cupids’ bow lips. He thought about how she had slowly moved closer to him as she brought the apples and honey to his lips. He wanted so badly to pull her close and kiss her, but he didn’t know how to begin, and she was dating Dean…and Ron’s sister…there were so many reasons why he could not move.<br/>
“We’d better get back to the green…Captain,” she said.<br/>
“Right,” Harry said, shaking off the fog around his thoughts. He followed Ginny’s waving red hair down the commentary box stairs. The light dappled her hair in moving waves, and as her hair swayed Harry was invaded by the smell it shed, of wildflowers.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Gryffindor and the Cannons both face crushing defeat</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning: I am a basketball novice, so my explanation of basketball positions might not be wholly satisfactory. I'm not sure if I got the Quidditch point system altogether correct, either, but please, if you choose to comment, let your words pass through three gates: is it true, is it necessary, and is it kind?<br/>Enjoy the new chapter:)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Gryffindor common room was as packed with people as Harry had ever seen it, and he now understood the phrase, ‘Standing Room Only’. Cormac McClaggen and his gang of 7th years had commandeered the best couches, and gaggles of girls improbably shared what armchairs were available, piled on the chair’s arms and yet more girls sitting on each other’s laps. The youngest students, whom Ginny had hoped would benefit most from the treat of watching live Quidditch, were sitting on the Afghani carpet, as if for story time. They looked openly wide-eyed and excited. Harry smiled, thinking back to himself, Ron, and Hermione, at 11. Had they been so transparently in awe of everything and everyone around them?<br/>
“All right, you lot, shut your gobs!” Ron cried, standing in front of the TV set. Silence descended, but clearly Hermione would have phrased the order differently because she shot him an exasperated glare.<br/>
“Before we switch on the television, we want to reiterate some ground rules and best practices regarding its presence in the common room,” she said authoritatively. “As per the notice on the bulletin board, the television is only to be operated by the Gryffindor prefects-myself, or Ronald Weasley, or Quidditch Captain Harry Potter for such training purposes as may arise.”<br/>
A chorus of groans rose from the crowd, and Lavender’s exasperated squeal, “Get on with it, Hermione!”<br/>
Unphased, Hermione continued, “Furthermore, the penalty for being found to have operated the television without the express permission or supervision of one of the aforementioned individuals is deduction of ad maximum five points from Gryffindor house-deducted from each individual found to be operating and or viewing at the time of discovery, or mentioned in the report of an incident.”<br/>
“Five points per person watching or messing about with it. Got it?” Ron said, with a hint of Fred’s penchant for believable menace.<br/>
“Do you understand?” Hermione said, and the assembled Gryffindors answered “We understand.”<br/>
“Right then,” Ron said, and with the remote control switched the set on.<br/>
Hermione took a seat beside Harry, and Ron sat on the other side of him. He broke prefect mode almost at once, and dug around in the deep pockets of his robes.<br/>
“Got you something, mate,” he said, with the manic grin of a devoted sports lover.<br/>
“Oh, yeah? Thanks, mate,” Harry said, trying to hide his hesitance as he accepted the sweaty, sherbet orange bundle of wrinkled cloth.<br/>
When he straightened it out, he saw that it was a very large Chudley Cannons jersey.<br/>
“Its not new, it used to be Charlie’s that’s why it’s so huge. But, him and Percy had one just alike, so I wrote Mum and she sent them along,” Ron said.<br/>
“Where’s yours’?” Hermione asked.<br/>
Ron smiled proudly, and whipped off his robes…and unbuttoned his shirt. With a fiendish smile, he proudly displayed the double C’s on an orange crème background of his favorite team.<br/>
Hermione grimaced, and shook her head.<br/>
“What? You’ll see. We’ve got McGuffie, we’ve got Clatterbuck. The boys are back in town, and we mean business!” Ron whooped.<br/>
Harry thought it would take a lot more than McGuffie’s recently drained sinus passages and Clatterbuck’s mended clavicle to defeat the Ballycastle Bats, but he felt torn between Hermione’s incredulous look of scornful doubt, and Ron, whose whooping was drawing a lot of attention and some laughter.<br/>
“Mate, you’re mad if you think the Cannons have a chance against Ballycastle!” Seamus said, and as he and Ron went back and forth Harry felt something was off, but couldn’t quite identify what. Then he put a finger on it: Seamus was seldom without Dean, but he was tonight, sitting by himself in a crimson brocade upholstered armchair.<br/>
Harry scanned the room, and did not see Ginny, either.<br/>
As if on cue, he heard her laughter. He looked to the common room door, and saw Ginny, with her small hand in Dean’s, walking ahead of him as if leading him along. She said something in a voice too low to be heard by anyone but him, and turned to look into his eyes with a toss of her long, waving flag of flame colored hair.<br/>
She and Dean had seemed more unified than ever since he took up for her against Peakes at practice. By comparison, she had taken Harry up to the commentary box for a telling off. It was clear that he didn’t measure up to Wood or Angelina as a captain, and in truth, Harry was feeling a bit out of his depth. Somehow he doubted the Half Blood Prince would be of much help with how to be a better Quidditch captain.<br/>
A voice inside him as subtle as fluttering wings, like a little brother hesitantly reminding Harry of his presence without any real hope of being taken seriously said, ‘My dad was Quidditch captain.’<br/>
No use thinking that way, of some parallel life where he could ask his dad for advice…<br/>
“Will you shut it!” Ginny said.<br/>
Harry blinked back to attention. He glanced at the TV-the commentators, former Magpies Keeper Martin Martlet and Holyhead Harpies Chaser Gwyneth Polgreen were doing the pre-show, talking over both teams’ chances.<br/>
“I agree, Gwyn, McGuffie’s an asset, but he’s known to sneeze at the most inopportune moments,” Martlet said.<br/>
Harry looked over at Ginny, who was aiming her hard amber glare at Peakes yet again.<br/>
“What? I’m just saying its barmy. How’s ballet meant to help with Quidditch?” Peakes protested.<br/>
“Ballet? What?” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny rolled her eyes, and tossed her flaming veil of wildflower scented hair furiously, too. “I told you, its not a dance, it’s a form of exercise.”<br/>
“What’s this about, then?” Harry said. He didn’t want to get on Ginny’s case, but he’d told her once to lay off Peakes.<br/>
“He was having a go at Cho, again,” Ginny said.<br/>
“I wasn’t!” Peakes said. “I was just saying, the Ravenclaw team’s doing some kind of funny dance at their practice. They’re all at it, not just Chang.”<br/>
“Yoga. They do Yoga, before they get on their brooms, and I think it’s a good idea, actually. Its got every kind of conditioning you need: respiratory, neurological, cardio, PNF stretching,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Gin-shhhh!” Ron said, his finger to his mouth warningly. Ginny’s brown eyes widened in outrage.<br/>
“That does sound like a good idea! I imagine it would limber their muscles and open their respiratory system, warm their bodies and make flying at great heights much less of a physical strain,” Hermione said. “Excellent strategy! Is Cho captain this year?”<br/>
“I think she must be, she’s in her last year,” Harry said.<br/>
“Well, sounds as if she’s cooking with gas, this year!” Hermione said, and then her’s and everyone’s attention, even Ginny’s and Peakes, turned to the television as the scene changed from Martlet and Polgreen at their desks to a Quidditch pitch. Both teams were assembling, the celebrated Ballycastle Bats, and the Cannons.<br/>
“Harry!” Ron hissed, “Put your jersey on!”<br/>
Hermione looked at him, as if saying, ‘Grow a pair.’<br/>
She just didn’t understand. Ron was the first boy his own age who had ever wanted him for a friend. At his primary school in Surrey, Dudley’s gang terrorized him, and everyone was too afraid of them to look kindly on Harry. Ron had shared whatever he had with him, from the word go-so what, if he had an affinity for the worst team in the league? Harry owed him, for life.<br/>
He slipped on the jersey, which smelled like Charlie Weasley’s sweat, which had been fermenting since the mid-80s.<br/>
Ron watched the screen, enrapt. Seamus’s cheers for the Irish team were warranted, for their Chaser’s stellar scores and their Keeper’s admirable execution of the Sloth Roll. However, Ron’s team provided suspense of a different sort, raising questions that bordered on existential.<br/>
What had led Marvin Jolly and Phil Fetterlane, the Beaters, to fly their brooms into each other? Just what had Paul Greenhalgh, the Seeker, been looking at so intensely to his left, while the Snitch idled like a feeding hummingbird round his shoulder, with an air of impatience, as if saying, ‘You gonna catch me, or do you need an invitation, pal?’<br/>
Clatterbuck and McGuffie, the Chasers back from injury, did their bit…but, it wasn’t just their war, the rest of the team seemed to forget.<br/>
Harry thought he understood what Ginny meant in the commentary box, about a team needing to be a unit, not just seven people on the pitch. Each of the Cannons were doing their bit, but they didn’t have a…cohesion, a harmony, that was essential to victory.  He glanced over to tell her, but she, Dean, and Seamus seemed engaged in a rock/paper/scissors tournament that kept ending in laughter. Ginny covered Seamus’s rock, and Dean looked over and caught Harry watching.<br/>
“It’s a drinking game, but all we’ve got is butterbeer!” he said.<br/>
“Well, it has a small alcohol content, actually. Enough to intoxicate a house elf,” Hermione said.<br/>
“Again, with the house elves,” Seamus groaned. “If you set them free, Granger, you ever think about who they’d put to work next to clean this place?”<br/>
“Hopefully for once wizards would learn to pick up after themselves!” Hermione said indignantly. “Its not just house elf rights that need re-examination and expansion, what of centaurs, giants, werewolves?”<br/>
“Like Professor Lupin! I always wonder what happened to him, if he found another job…” Dean said, with a vulnerability in his eyes that Harry found too closely familiar.<br/>
“He’s all right. He comes round ours’, sometimes; Mum loves feeding bachelors, you know,” Ginny said.<br/>
Dean laughed, and looked visibly relieved. “Brilliant!” he said, and he and Ginny shared yet another smile.<br/>
“Wish he could come back to Hogwarts; be a damn sight better than Snape. Harry, reckon we should start the D.A. back up, so we can actually learn something?” Dean said.<br/>
“That’d be the ticket, wouldn’t it?” Ginny agreed.<br/>
“Err…” Harry said, feeling put on the spot. Then, he recalled the Prince’s advice: ‘Ask her if she’d like to study.’ If Ginny was keen, maybe he should consider it?<br/>
“Harry doesn’t have time this year, he’s Quidditch captain. The both of you are on the team, as well!” Hermione said, looking to Ron for support, but his response was,<br/>
“ARE YOU BLIND, GREENHALGH?!”<br/>
Once again, the Cannons’ Seeker had wasted an obvious opportunity for a catch. Harry felt as if Hermione had done the same. Didn’t she realize how vital starting the D.A. up again was to his happiness? He imagined standing behind Ginny’s fragrant hair as he helped her hold her wand steady to perform a Charm she was having difficulty with….or defeating Dean in a practice duel, Ginny’s eyes falling on Harry with that molten honey gaze, clearly seeing that he was the better man…<br/>
“Anyway, Snape is one of our better Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers. He’s no Lupin, and his delivery leaves much to be desired, but you can rather catch up once you get the hang of non-verbally delivering spells,” Hermione said.<br/>
Dean and Ginny murmured their assent. Harry felt winded that they had given up the idea of resurrecting the D.A. so quickly. Had playing under his leadership on the Quidditch team made them think less of him?<br/>
“It’s over! Its over! All right, MacMorrighan, you’ve done it!” Seamus cheered, leaping out of his chair.<br/>
“It’s over, already?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“You tell me: MacMorrighan caught the Snitch, didn’t he? I’d call that a done deal!” Seamus crowed.<br/>
Harry wanted to interject that Quidditch didn’t exactly work that way: one could still catch the Snitch and lose, if the other team was ahead in points overall, as at the 1994 World Cup when Krum had caught the Snitch but Bulgaria still lost. But, correcting Seamus didn’t seem as pressing as the grief-stricken look on Ron’s face.<br/>
“But…we’ve got McGuffie…we’ve got Clatterbuck….” Ron said, in disbelief and hollowed faith.<br/>
“Better luck next match, Weasley!” Seamus cackled.<br/>
“That’s right, Finnigan, it’s a six game series, don’t count your salamanders before they hatch!” Ron said, pointing his finger warningly at Seamus.<br/>
Hermione coaxed his pointer finger and arm down, and said, “Honestly, what did you expect?”<br/>
“Oh, poor Won-Won! Your team will do better next time,” Lavender said, in a sing-song baby talk voice, and began fussing with Ron’s hair as if he had a fever.<br/>
Hermione stiffly moved away, and slipped upstairs; Ron looked trapped.</p><p>Defeat only made him dig in harder on the matter of the Chudley Cannons. He wore his jersey under his school shirt and robes; he spent lunch and study hour reading sports magazines and strategizing on the Cannons' behalf, devising fantasy plays  with the solemnity of an Allied general with the D-Day invasion scheduled for the next morning. Harry said, ‘Good idea,’ when needed, but his mind was on a match nearer to his heart, that between Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. Maybe Cannons devotes had a philosophically balanced approach to life: maybe all one could do was cross their fingers and hope for the best. He had gone through the plays that he thought would work…but, he couldn’t solve the fact that Katie seemed out of her depth without the older players who had taught she and Harry the meaning of sport, who had all graduated; that Peakes and Coote seemed determined to replace Fred and George as the team jesters, but the butt of their jokes always seemed to be a female student; that Dean and Ginny were sometimes more interested in each other than Harry’s instructions, and as for Harry, himself…teaching Defense Against the Dark arts had somehow come easier to him than leading a Quidditch team.<br/>
No matter, he figured. No one wanted to lose, so of course his Gryffindors would play to win. </p><p> </p><p>Ginny Weasley figured maybe nothing in life was quite the way you dreamed it. If you’ve wanted something for a long time, you fantasize and embroider your own private version of it, and maybe begin to prefer it, and real life doesn’t compare. She’d yearned to see Hogwarts for herself, the moving staircases, ghosts, talking portraits, Quiddtich matches, and delicious food that her brothers described…and found those things, yes, but also difficult subjects and professors, and bullies who thought of her family as blood traitors. She’d fantasized about what it would be like to be rescued by a hero like Harry Potter from a Dark Magic menace…but there had been nothing romantic about almost dying in the Chamber of Secrets, and it had not made her the center of Harry’s world, the apple of his eye…Harry was just a boy, really, with ill-fitting clothes, no idea what to say in certain situations, taking his cues from her brothers, dubious role model material though they were.<br/>
She’d learned that everyone and everything has a dark and light side, sometimes people aren’t who they claim or appear to be, and a hero can be just a boy, a mere boy can be a hero.<br/>
It wasn’t as if she had anyone to share these observations with, however-she wasn’t a big fan of diaries, any longer. And Dean…well, Dean got her all wrong, sometimes. If she spoke her mind when an idiot like Peakes was mouthing off, or seemed passionate about something, he told her to calm down, not to be upset. He liked to keep conversation light, and was very physically affectionate. It was as if he was acting out his own fantasy, of what a relationship should be: fun, with lots of laughter and kissing, with a girl prone to laugh and kiss, who also got on great with his best mate.<br/>
Ginny knew she wasn’t that girl. She knew that sometimes, when Dean was sated from butterbeer and laughter, Seamus looked at her with a cobra’s eyes. He obviously, palpably didn’t want her around-it changed things, gave him less space and less of Dean’s attention. Ginny knew it…but she knew Dean wouldn’t believe her.<br/>
Any more than Harry had believed that their team wasn’t ready for their first match of the season.<br/>
Ginny looked up at the crisp, blue, cloudless autumn sky. She looked glanced ahead at her, at the royal blue and gold clad Ravenclaw team in formation on the other side of the grass, then on each side of her at her fellow crimson robed Gryffindors:<br/>
Katie, who’d lost motivation with none of her old friends around except Harry; Peakes and Coote, who thought they were a lot funnier than they were; Dean, who gave her an encouraging wink, once again misreading her and thinking she needed to gather her courage, Ron, who smelled like Percy’s old jersey, and Harry, who’d taken on his hardest to read expression, the one where his slender face became solemn, his rosy lips were determinedly set, and his green eyes darkened with the intensity of someone who knew they were facing unfavorable odds alone.<br/>
Madam Hooch blew her whistle, the teams mounted their brooms, and the wind carried Ginny forward and up.  Being on the Gryffindor Quidditch team wasn’t what she had expected or fantasized about, but she loved the rush of wind in her hair, and through her clothes, penetrating her Quiddich uniform and roughly caressing her skin. She had learned to fly all alone, over a meadow near her house, and no matter how many people were in the air with her in a match, she still went into that zone she had as a young girl flying alone: free, and focused.<br/>
Things were simpler, in the air: unlike all the facts she had to memorize and felt swamped by in class, in the air all she had to do was stay up and hold on. Ginny aimed her broom towards Katie, who had sighted her, too and was passing her the ball.<br/>
They were intercepted by a blue streak flying between them, and Ginny spun a bit, holding onto the handle of her Cleansweep as the blue blur passed.  By the time she had righted herself, she and Katie shared a look of horror. They were ringed by all three Ravenclaw Chasers, Clotilda Lingonberry, Drustan Ross, and Senara Nancarrow, who were passing the Quaffle back and forth. When Katie lunged her broom to try and intercept Nancarrow’s pass to Ross, it turned out to be a feint! Ross, in possession, streaked across the sky in the direction of the goal post, and was promptly replaced by the Beater Burt Thrasher, who aimed a Bludger Ginny’s and Katie’s way. They both scrambled away, their only concern not getting hit.<br/>
The game went on as it began: Nancarrow, Ross, and Lingonberry hoarding the Quaffle with their excellent formations, easily making it to the goal posts while Ron did fumbling air ballet trying to catch up. Ginny’s ears were ringing with wind, and the cold air made her face feel like it was breaking out into a rash of ice. Beneath her wind-rubbed skin, however, she grew hotter and hotter with frustration. Dean managed to pass her the Quaffle and she wasted no time in speeding towards the Ravenclaw goal. Peakes and Coote had interrupted whatever warning Harry was going to give them at practice about their Keeper, Biggerstaff, but when he scornfully kicked her pitched ball out of sight of his goal post, Ginny got the warning: he was bloody good.<br/>
Cho and Harry, meanwhile, were flying about three feet higher than the rest of them, streaks of blue and red, respectively that looked like the colored plumes from airplanes’ at a Muggle aircraft show, locked in their own private war for the Snitch.<br/>
By the time Madam Hooch blew her whistle for half time, Ravenclaw was sitting on 30 points, Gryffindor at 10, all scored by Katie. Neither Dean or Ginny had managed to get past Biggerstaff. Ginny descended, feeling a lurch in her stomach rather the way one felt on an elevator going down.<br/>
Each team went to their huddles. Cho’s black hair whipped behind her with an air of victory as she walked gracefully to the Ravenclaw side. The Gryffindors gathered around Harry.<br/>
“That formation they’re using, where’d they come up with it?” Ron fumed.<br/>
“You want me to be honest? They’re passing like basketball players-but in the air,” Katie said.<br/>
“Yeah, I noticed that, too! They haven’t got all five key positions, like in basketball, ‘cause there’s only three Chasers, but its no different than moving the ball between the power forward, the center, and the point guard,” Dean said.<br/>
“So, how do we get the ball away from them and around them if they’re sharing it like that to set up their shots?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Shouldn’t we ask you, Captain?” Coote said.<br/>
“Yeah, or did you get that badge out of a box of popcorn?” Peakes said.<br/>
“You’re out of line, and you can be replaced, you know,” Harry snapped.<br/>
“I was just-” Peakes began.<br/>
“Joking? Aren’t you always?” Ron said.<br/>
“I don’t wanna hear it out of you! Ever met a Quaffle you didn’t let in?” Peakes said.<br/>
Ginny opened her mouth to defend Ron instinctively, but Harry held his hands out and said, “Enough! Dean, Katie, how does this work in basketball?”<br/>
“The power forward guards key players on the other team, doesn’t let ‘em get the ball too long, blocks shots, goes one on one with them, gets the ball away from them, passes it to the center or the point guard, or makes the shot himself if he needs to,” Katie said. Dean nodded in confirmation.<br/>
“All right, and the center?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Plays close to the line,” Dean said.<br/>
“Point guard is the key shooter,” Katie said. “think…Michael Jordan.”<br/>
“All right-who feels like Michael Jordan on a broom today?” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny would have loved to say, ‘Me, me, me!’ and step up and step forward to volunteer…but, deep down she knew that only Katie had the experience playing Biggerstaff to get around him. She was the only one who had managed to score anything.<br/>
“That’s all you, Katie!” Ron said.<br/>
She actually blushed a bit, and said, “I’ll do what I can.”<br/>
“All right, Dean, you’re center. I want you aiming for the rings Biggerstaff leaves unguarded when he’s recovering from Katie’s score. When he throws the ball back out, catch it, and give it right back to him,” Harry said. “Gin, you’re power forward. Do what you have to do to get that ball away from the Ravenclaw Chasers, and get it to Dean or Katie.”<br/>
Ginny nodded. It wasn’t as glorious as scoring herself, but it was necessary…and anyway, Dennis Rodman was a power forward, and he certainly wasn’t forgettable.<br/>
Ginny was feeling aggressive, anyway, because of how down they were, and robbing Ross, Lingonberry, and Nancarrow of the ball any chance she got was the perfect outlet for it. She craved the look of outrage she caught out of the corner of their eye as she blazed away, and passed to Dean or Katie. With a clear strategy in her head, Katie was reinvigorated, and between her and Dean the score began to look more respectable: 45 to 35. Ten points off was nothing, if they kept this up, Ginny reckoned. They needed two more good scores to be ahead, and if Harry caught the Snitch, it was all wrapped up.<br/>
The steady murmur from the crowd below turned to an oceanic roar. Ginny laughed, and pumped her fist in sudden joy.  He’d done it! Harry had caught the Snitch.<br/>
“And that’s a wrap! The Snitch is in Chang’s hand, and the first victory of the year is Ravenclaw’s! Its over, 35 to 185!” Zacharias Smith announced, sounding too pleased about it. Like many Hogwarts students, he was jealous of Harry’s high profile, and every snide and undermining about it.<br/>
Ginny didn’t want to leave the air. She knew the moment her feet touched the ground, she and her team would begin having to accept their failure, and bearing the scrutiny of their entire house.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ginny and Dean have a pivotal conversation</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So...the timeline is much different from canon. Ginny and Dean break up at the beginning of the year...so, will Harry and Ginny hook up sooner? We'll see!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ginny waited expectantly at Slughorn’s desk as he made a big show of tasting her Pep-Up potion.<br/>
“Excellent, Miss Weasley!” he said, delightedly. “Just the right amount of peppermint. Puts me to mind of a most memorable holiday to Morocco I once took!”<br/>
“Oh? Never been there, but I went to Egypt with my whole family, once. My brother works out there,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Is that right? What does he do? Ministry liaison?” Slughorn asked.<br/>
Ginny shook her head. “Curse breaker, for Gringott’s,” she said.<br/>
“Well,” Slughorn said slowly, clearly impressed. “Nice to have connections, isn’t it?”<br/>
“Oh, I’m not interested in banking. I don’t know what I want to do. I’m not clever,” Ginny said.<br/>
“I protest, Miss Weasley! First time ever I saw you, you demonstrated quite a bit of natural ability at Defensive Magic. The most amusing Bat Bogey Hex I ever beheld!” Slughorn declared. “and you’ve got a flare for potions, too.”<br/>
“Hmm…so I should hex people, then patch them up with a potion right after?” Ginny said.<br/>
Slughorn chortled. It was odd to have such a jolly Potions Master, a far cry from Snape. Slughorn’s eyes disappeared into the plump rolls of his face when he laughed, and his belly jiggled. He even held his belly, like a drawing of Father Christmas.<br/>
“Oh, you’re a hard one to handle, aren’t you? Five points to Gryffindor, young lady,” Slughorn said.<br/>
"Why?" Ginny asked.<br/>
“Why? Because laughter is the best medicine of all, quite apart from any Potion! Oh, and, here you are,” he said, pulling an invitation from his desk.<br/>
“Another party?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“A little something-or-other, for the Equinox,” Slughorn said. “Gwenog has tentatively promised to stop by-Gwenog Jones? I was hoping to introduce her to Miss Chang. Stunning catch, wasn’t that? She’s Harpy material!”<br/>
Ginny left his desk clutching  her invitation to the Equinox party, and wanting her Pep-Up potion back, for her own use. Leave it to a Slytherin to butter you up and then remind you that you’re a loser, she thought. She’d buried herself in studying for her Charms O.W.L. to drown out the whispers and giggles of derision that followed her about the corridors after Gryffindor’s pummeling loss to Ravenclaw. They proved easy to drown out, after a while: she had once, after all, been known as the Heir of Slytherin, and well used to derision and being a pariah.<br/>
Dean and Ron were taking the loss in stride, but Harry had been distinctly stormy all Sunday. Monday evening would be their first practice since the loss, and she had so much to say to him…would he listen? Ginny thought of the year before, and how they seemed to be warming up to each other. But, something had changed since Sirius died…Harry was more distant from everyone. Even his rages the year before had been his way of letting everyone know how he felt; but, all through the summer at her house he’d hidden behind a veneer of false cheerfulness, eating treacle tart and playing pick-up Quidditch in the orchard with a determinedly bland expression, while his eyes told a different story. They were shell-shocked and aged by a century, since watching his godfather fall through the Veil.<br/>
When class ended, Ginny spotted Dean and Seamus in the corridor and headed over to them.<br/>
“Did you hear about Malfoy?” Dean asked.<br/>
“No, what about him?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“He’s not playing the next match!” Seamus said.<br/>
“What? Why? He’d never let himself be swapped out for another player, he wants the glory too badly,” Ginny said.<br/>
“That’s what I said, but he had some kind of row with Snape, and now he’s got detention,” Dean said.<br/>
“Snape, giving Malfoy detention? No, that sounds well off,” Ginny said.<br/>
“I know,” Dean agreed, as they walked by several portraits with Rembrandt-esque shadows and light, and a stained glass window of a contemplative looking Rowena Ravenclaw.<br/>
“Who’s his replacement?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“A fourth year girl called Primula Hooks,” Dean said.<br/>
“Never heard of her,” Ginny said. “This isn’t good. I haven’t seen how Harry handles surprises like that, as captain.”<br/>
“He’s not brilliant at it, is he?” Seamus said.<br/>
“Nah, he’s all right. He gives everyone a voice, listens to everyone’s ideas. I think that’s a good captain,” Dean said.<br/>
“I’m not saying he’s a bad captain…nor was the bloke driving the ‘Titanic,’ that iceberg just got in the way, right?” Seamus said.<br/>
Dean smirked a bit, and his eyes brightened in subtle laughter. Seamus laughed raucously at his own joke, but Ginny scowled.<br/>
“Harry’s ten times the wizard you’ll ever be-everything’s a laugh to you,” Ginny said.<br/>
Dean’s expression changed from bemused to grave, and Seamus said, angrily,<br/>
“Huh? What was that?”<br/>
“Nothing, mate,” Dean said. “Its all good.”<br/>
“Harry’s got a lot on his plate,” Ginny said heatedly. Seamus said nothing to her, but looked quizzically at Dean, as if asking, ‘Is that all right with you?’<br/>
“Its nothing!” Dean insisted.<br/>
“Sure. See you later, mate,” Seamus said, and peeled off.<br/>
“What was that about?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“You tell me,” Dean said.<br/>
“What’s that mean?” Ginny demanded.<br/>
“You got really upset when Seamus was talking about Harry. Like…like he’s your man, or something,” Dean said.<br/>
All the blood rushed to Ginny’s face. She was shocked. Dean was usually so happy-go-lucky, to the point that she didn’t feel like he’d be receptive if she talked about being worried about her brothers in the Order of the Phoenix, or headlines about the war in the Daily Prophet, with him. But, that look that he and Seamus had passed back and forth was like an allusion to a prior conversation…oh, he’d been having deep conversations, all right: about her, with Seamus!<br/>
“First of all, I hate all that ‘my man’ ‘my woman’ shite; people don’t own each other,” Ginny said.<br/>
Dean stopped walking, stopping by an oriel window with a view of the pewter sky and sterling lake beneath it. He sighed.<br/>
“I know, I know. But, you don’t hear yourself whenever Harry comes up. You get all…intense. There’s something in your eyes, and your voice, that isn’t there any other time,” Dean said earnestly.<br/>
“He’s my friend!” she fired back.<br/>
“No, he’s not,” Dean said gently.<br/>
It wasn’t like her fights with Ron, in which he threw mud and she threw it back until some cooler head, usually their mother, or  Hermione, prevailed. Dean wasn’t trying to hurt her or to win. He was merely being honest, she could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. And Ginny felt a bit breathless. Was he right? Would he have told her about wanting to talk to Sirius, if anyone else had been around? If Ron and Hermione had been available? He had forgotten that she was possessed by Voldemort until she reminded him, and he hadn’t wanted her to go to London to rescue Sirius, at first. They shared every meal, played Quidditch whenever weather was fine, and went school shopping at Diagon Alley together in the summer, were on the same Quiddtich team and in the same school house…but it wasn’t as if they’d had any deep talks, or she was the first person Harry thought of when he needed support.<br/>
She was always in his presence as part of a group, be it her family, the Gryffindor house and house Quidditch team, or the D.A. He’d never just wanted her.<br/>
“I mean, he’s as much my friend as he is yours’, you know? I like him, we talk every now and then…but he’s only close to Ron and Hermione. They’re the only ones he’s ever going to seriously let in,” Dean said sensibly.<br/>
Ginny could tell he knew…how badly she had longed to be let in. It was as if he was warning her not to get her heart set on it, again. If she were him, she’d warn herself, too. Dean was perfectly right: loving Harry had never yielded much results, for her. She’d only begun to feel alive when she told herself that she didn’t care…but when Sirius fell through the Veil, and Harry screamed and struggled in Lupin’s arms to follow him, when he showed up at Ginny’s house for the summer freshly orphaned with a bruised soul shining with a testimony of horror in his emerald green eyes, hiding it all behind a false smile, how could she not care?<br/>
She wanted, perhaps worse and fiercer than ever before, to be closer to him, to cradle his pain like a baby bird with wings broken by a storm’s wind. She wanted to make him smile, to win every match for him, to make him laugh and see a true smile on his face.<br/>
She looked at Dean, and saw that he was smiling sadly at her.<br/>
“I like you, a lot,” she said plaintively.<br/>
“But you love him. And I deserve better than someone who loves someone else,” Dean said.<br/>
“I tried to get over it. I thought I had. I…thought if I just kept busy…” Ginny said.<br/>
“Busy? Oh, thanks,” Dean laughed.<br/>
“No, not like that…” Ginny said.<br/>
“Gin, I know,” Dean sighed. “Look, I…gotta go catch up with Seamus. And Harry…to tell him I’m leaving the team.”<br/>
“You can’t break up our team! You’ve only played one game with us!” Ginny said.<br/>
“Maybe the team needs a bit of shaking up. You’ll do all right without me,” Dean said, and Ginny knew he didn’t just mean the team.<br/>
Part of her wanted to scream, ‘I need you!’ But, the things she needed him for were, she knew, selfish. To remind herself to forget Harry, to have someone and something else to focus on. But, that would be degrading to her, and selfish towards Dean.<br/>
Maybe Dean was right, and as much as she had wanted Harry, and as long as they’d known each other, they never  really had been friends. She had faced her second year at Hogwarts without any friends of her own, still known as the Heir of Slytherin, the Basilisk Girl, and built her courage brick by brick, day by day, and built a new image for herself, by being as normal and friendly and even-tempered as she could, until gradually people began to stop suspecting her of being a Muggle-hating murderer. She had faced that, and conquered it, and she could walk onto the Quidditch pitch without Dean as a shield, and play her best, even if her Captain was the boy she couldn’t seem to stop loving.<br/>
Ginny didn’t stop Dean as he walked away. She knew he needed it, and she knew that she could handle it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Easy mistake to make, but its obvious where you went wrong,” McClaggen said. Harry had tuned out, as McClaggen gave his personal opinion as to why the match against Ravenclaw hadn’t gone Gryffindor’s way.<br/>
Harry was on his way to Herbology. The gray lake shone over his shoulder in the autumn sunshine. His stomach flip-flopped as he caught sight of Ginny’s fiery hair. She was sitting cross-legged on the grass by the water, reading. Harry strained to see the book’s title. She was most likely studying for O.W.L.s.<br/>
“Potter? Did you hear me?” McClaggen said. The greenhouses were in sight, so close but so far away.<br/>
“Sure,” Harry said.<br/>
“Great, so you agree: The Quidditch gene skipped Ron. He shouldn’t be on the team, no matter how many of his brothers actually had talent,” McClaggen said smugly.<br/>
“What?” Harry said, outraged now that he had the gist of what McClaggen had been saying. He reluctantly tore his gaze away from Ginny, and said, “Ron’s a good Keeper. I’m the one who didn’t catch the Snitch before Cho. You can’t use him as an excuse to elbow your way onto the team, McClaggen. When I have an opening, I’ll let you know.”<br/>
McClaggen smirked and gave a smug laugh.<br/>
“You do that, when you’re interested in winning. But a Cannons fan wouldn’t know anything about that, would they?” he said coolly, and peeled off.<br/>
Harry wanted more than anything to shout that he wasn’t a Cannons fan! He was affronted and annoyed by McClaggen, and didn’t feel like wasting any more of his time. Harry glanced at the glass greenhouses, but sighed. If he was going to develop an affinity for magical flora, he reckoned it would have happened in six years’ time. He didn’t need a N.E.W.T level passing mark in Herbology to be an Auror-unless there was one day a Dark Wizard terrorist cell whose weapon of choice was Devil’s Snare-so Harry figured he could skive off, just once.</p><p>He walked to the lake, telling himself that he wasn’t trying to run into Ginny. He was several feet away from where she sat beneath the expansive shade of a tree, reading. She was lying on her stomach, now, and her black uniform slacks fit her bottom snugly. Her hair was all falling over one shoulder, and the light bouncing off the lake was dancing in her eyes, lightening them to the very color of honey.</p><p>She looked up, and those golden eyes were trained on him. Harry felt cold sweat break out up and down his body. Ginny sat up, dusted herself off, and waved brightly. He decided to jog over to her for a quick chat…and didn’t see the large branch of driftwood in front of him. Harry tripped, and went sailing onto the muddy ground.</p><p>“Where’s the fire, Captain?” Ginny said, holding her hand out to help him up.<br/>
“I…didn’t see the log,” Harry said, standing up and brushing off his blessedly, mercifully black robes. He added, “I guess that’s my thing, lately: not seeing things. Like Snitches, for instance.”<br/>
Ginny smirked. “Don’t beat yourself up. We could’ve scored better. Has Dean told you?”<br/>
“Told me what?” Harry said.<br/>
“He’s leaving the team,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Over one poxy game? It’s the first of the year!” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny calmly shook her head, and said, “No, its not about losing the match. Its us. We broke up…I think.”<br/>
Harry was genuinely shocked. The gray, sunshine dappled water lapped at the muddy shore, and he and Ginny moved to higher ground, to the grassy lawn that spilled out to the water, and sat on the soft grass.<br/>
“You think?” he asked.<br/>
“Yeah,” she said.<br/>
“And…are you all right with it?” Harry asked.<br/>
“He’s got his reasons. And, I get it,” Ginny said. She seemed to want to leave it there, so Harry didn’t ask anymore.<br/>
“I’ve got to put fliers up on the bulletin board, saying we need a new Chaser, and I’m going to have to go to McGonagall and ask for extra practice time, for tryouts and training…” Harry calculated. No wonder Oliver and Angelina had both seemed so high strung: being Quidditch captain seemed like a never-ending logistics nightmare.<br/>
“Harry,” Ginny said calmly, “don’t look at this as a problem to solve. Maybe its an opportunity to grow as a team.”<br/>
Harry sighed. “Is this about what you told me in the commentary box, at practice?”</p><p>Ginny nodded. “Yes, actually. We aren’t a unit. I used to dream of being on the old team-Wood, Alicia, Angelina, Katie, my brothers, and you. You were like…rock stars, to me,” Ginny laughed, bemused at her first and second year self. “You had something special. We haven’t got that. But, why do you think that is?”</p><p>Harry took a deep breath, and actually thought about it.<br/>
“Wood was a bloody mad scientist of Quidditch. He always had some new idea he wanted us to try out, that he’d gotten from watching the pros and reading about them, and he’d make us run through it until we got it, rain or shine. Usually rain, rather than shine. But, he wasn’t sadistic about it, or anything. It sort of rubbed off, how passionate he was. It was inspiring. And when it wasn’t, he didn’t mind Fred and George taking the mickey out of him about going overboard. And with their attitude about it, we kind of all just laughed it off, and went along,” Harry said, smiling at those memories of when Quidditch was one of his favorite aspects of life at Hogwarts.</p><p>Ginny smiled, and said, “Exactly! It was like a family, and Wood wasn’t just your Captain, he was like a brother. He pushed you to be better, but he inspired you to get there, and he looked out for you. The way you did last year, Harry.”<br/>
“I wasn’t on the team last year, remember?” Harry pointed out.<br/>
“No, I mean with the D.A. That was the first time I’d ever felt…apart of anything, really. I wouldn’t have had the courage to try out for the team, if I hadn’t been in the D.A.,” Ginny said.<br/>
Harry was astounded. Ginny had named the D.A., and gotten everyone laughing with her Umbridge impression…making groups of people notice her and knowing what to say and getting everyone feeling upbeat didn’t seem difficult for her, at all, anymore. Maybe she was still more like that shy little girl he had first met than he realized. Their eyes met, and Harry held Ginny’s gaze as the shadows of oaks swaying in the wind danced on their faces. Harry could stare forever at Ginny’s honey colored eyes stealing what little light filtered beneath the trees and shone through the lacy shadows.<br/>
“Well, why can’t I do that with the team?” Harry asked.<br/>
“You tell me,” Ginny said.<br/>
Harry lay on the grass, and looked up at the mighty oak tree’s branches. Ginny had been honest with him, so he felt he owed her an explanation, too.<br/>
“I don’t know much about Quidditch. I mean, I know what I’ve learned at school, and from your brothers, and seeing the World Cup year before last, but I…don’t know enough to lead a team,” Harry said.<br/>
“You’re the youngest Seeker in a hundred years for Gryffindor House! The team won the Quidditch Cup for the first time in seven years with you as Seeker!” Ginny burst out.<br/>
“I know, I know. But…its not like I get to listen to Wizard radio or watch Wizard television, or go to Premier League matches during the holidays. If I’m not at your house, I’m at the Dursleys, and when I’m there, I just try not to be noticed,” Harry said.<br/>
“What do you mean?” Ginny asked.</p><p>Harry felt exasperated. He didn’t want to talk about miserable things. Ginny was usually so light-hearted, telling jokes or doing impressions, or coaxing Crookshanks and Arnold to do tricks; even her fights with Ron were usually amusing, for her witty comebacks. He didn’t expect her to want to play Agony Aunt, and he certainly didn’t want to spill his guts about sad things, like a talk show guestt.</p><p>“I dunno! I sleep, I take walks, I stay out of everyone’s hair, and all I know about what’s going on in our world is what Ron and Hermione tell me in a letter, or what I can pick up from the newspaper-when they’re printing the truth, anyway,” Harry said, more bitterly then he meant to. </p><p>There was a short silence, filled by the lapping of the waters of the lake. Then, Ginny nodded as if making up her mind.</p><p>“They’re shits, aren’t they?” Ginny said. “Those Muggles you live with? Proper shits.”<br/>
Harry blinked. Calm as anything, unblinkingly, she had just called his aunt and uncle ‘shits’. When Harry had recovered from the shock, he burst out laughing. He thought maybe he had laughed too hard, too long, when he noticed that Ginny’s small, rosy, delicate mouth was giving him a Mona Lisa smile, and a slightly ironic quirk of her eyebrows seemed to say, ‘That’s enough, now’.<br/>
“Look, you’re Captain, I’m not, I get that, and I don’t want to overstep my boundaries-” Ginny began.<br/>
Harry interrupted, “No, Gin, its all right. I want to hear what you have to say. Maybe if I had listened to you about us not being ready, we wouldn’t have lost one match and one Chaser.”<br/>
“I told you, Dean left for his own reasons,” Ginny said. “And don’t worry about breaking in a new player-Slytherin’s doing the same. You haven’t heard about Malfoy?”<br/>
“What about him?” Harry said. He had far from forgotten Malfoy’s fishy behavior in Knockturn Alley, nor his words to Parkinson and Zabini on the train.<br/>
“He’s off the team. Dean and Seamus said he rowed with Snape, and he’s in detention during the match next Saturday. He might be off the team altogether,” she said. “He’s been replaced by a fourth year girl called Primula Hooks.”<br/>
“What?” Harry said. “No. He’d never. Snape would never. He worships Malfoy, because him and his father were Dark Magic Eagle Scouts together back in the day,” Harry said snidely.<br/>
Ginny looked torn between laughter and cautioning Harry against talking too openly about who was who in Voldemort’s ranks, giving her a most Hermione-esque expression. He caught her eye and they both gave way to bemusement, but she quickly added,<br/>
“It is strange.”<br/>
“What would he be rowing with Snape over? He’s always treated him like a pampered little prince,” Harry said.<br/>
“Who knows what goes on in Slytherin house?” Ginny said dismissively.<br/>
“There’s more to this than that. Look, Gin, can I trust you?” Harry asked.<br/>
She nodded fervently, the light in her eyes turning focused and fiery.<br/>
“I think Malfoy’s become a Death Eater, like his father,” Harry said. He unspooled to her all that he had seen and overheard on the train.<br/>
“That’s why you were late coming to the feast!” Ginny gasped, when he got to Malfoy breaking his nose and leaving him in the luggage car, and Tonks finding him and healing his nose. Harry felt quite pleased that she had noticed, and was concerned.<br/>
Harry nodded. “What do you make of it? I think Ron and Hermione are sick of hearing me talk about it," he said.<br/>
“Yeah, well, they’re a little preoccupied this year, aren’t they? Being in love with each other and not being able to admit it just eats away at their schedule,” Ginny said.<br/>
Harry choked on his laughter and it came out in a surprised bark.<br/>
“What, hadn’t you noticed?” she said.<br/>
“Sort of. I guess it scares me. What if they get together and split up?” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny shrugged. “It happens,” she said. He felt like a dunce-she had just broken up with Dean.<br/>
“That is fishy about Malfoy. I’ll ask my cousin what’s up with him and Snape. She could work for the Daily Mail, she always knows everyone else’s business,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Your cousin?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Mafalda, in Slytherin?” Ginny said.<br/>
“I had no idea there were any Weasleys in Slytherin!” Harry said.<br/>
“Don’t judge us all by her,” Ginny said, with a smirk.<br/>
“Thanks for hearing me out,” Harry said.<br/>
“Sadly, its not too far fetched. Sirius’s brother was Malfoy’s age when he joined up, wasn’t he?” Ginny said.<br/>
“16? I…think Sirius did mention that, once. He didn’t really like to talk about his relatives who were Death Eaters,” Harry said.<br/>
“Course he wouldn’t. Guilt by association landed him in Azkaban without a trial. I guess with all of his living relatives on Voldemort’s side, it wasn’t a stretch to believe that he was, too, even for Dumbledore,” Ginny said.<br/>
Harry looked away from Ginny, as the memory rose of his own anger at Dumbledore for not doing enough for Sirius. It was the first time that he had seen the Headmaster in tears.<br/>
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought up Sirius,” Ginny said quickly. </p><p>It was the first time he had heard that quiver in her voice that Ron and Hermione sometimes had when they thought he was going to start shouting. Harry wished he could wear a sandwich board sign that said, ‘That’s not me.’ He didn’t mean to shout, or to shut down and stop talking, altogether. Both just happened when his feelings and memories were too much.<br/>
“Its all right. I don’t mind talking about him. I did last year…with Nearly Headless Nick. And Dumbledore…and Luna,” Harry said.<br/>
“Luna? Really?” Ginny said. “What did she say?”<br/>
“Well, its rather private, but…she said that when you lose something, it tends to come back, just in a different form than it was before,” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny nodded thoughtfully, and said, “Very Ravenclaw, that, isn’t it?”<br/>
Harry laughed. “Very. Speaking of Ravenclaw tactics…do you think we should start doing Yoga?”<br/>
“I think Ron already does, every time he tries to block a goal,” Ginny said. She and Harry both laughed.<br/>
When they’d settled down, Ginny said, “Look, why don’t you read some books about pro Quidditch teams, and old articles on file about matches, brush up on plays that the best teams use? And I’ll speak to Mafalda about Malfoy and Snape.”</p><p>Harry felt lighter, as if someone had solved all his problems…even though he was still down a Chaser, the Captain of a losing team, and was no closer to knowing what Draco was trying to buy in Knockturn Alley than when Malfoy had broken his nose. But, as he watched Ginny walk back up to the castle, her fiery hair dancing behind her, the sun seemed brighter and warmer, and the patches of blue sky between gray swaths of cloud seemed certain to break through.<br/>
“Harry!” said a small female voice he didn’t recognize. He turned around, and a girl of about 12 in Gryffindor robes handed him a note.<br/>
“Er, thanks!” he called after her quickly retreating second year, and he opened the note. It was from Dumbledore, giving the date and time of their next lesson.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Harry interviews Mafalda about Malfoy's recent activity; Dean starts a club; Ron and Lavender cause a scene; Ginny is jealous of Hermione and Dean</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Thankfully, Dumbledore’s lesson was scheduled for the following night. Harry had six Quidditch players to face, and he was loathe to do it. Katie had served under better Captains, Peakes and Coote were a two-man mutiny as it was, their loss just compounded matters; Ron’s confidence issues were surely not helped by all the scores the Ravenclaw team had gotten by him, and Ginny…as ever, she was a wildcard. How would she play, under the weight of the double disappointment of their loss and her breakup with Dean?<br/>
‘Just focus on getting a third Chaser,’ Harry told himself, as he taped up a notice for the position on the common room bulletin board.<br/>
“Ah, Gin mentioned it to you?” Dean said.<br/>
“Yeah,” Harry said, turning around to face him.<br/>
“Well. How much did she tell you?” Dean said, with a resigned face, as if he could guess how much and just what Ginny had told Harry.<br/>
“She just said you had your reasons, and she understood. She was sort of…close to the vest,” Harry said.<br/>
Dean’s full, dark eyebrows raised in surprise. “Oh…I thought..” Dean said, looking confused, and then shook it off. “Nevermind.”<br/>
Harry decided not to pursue it, but he couldn’t imagine why he thought Ginny would be spilling her guts about their breakup to Harry.<br/>
Dean shrugged, and began taping a notice of his own on the board. Harry was surprised to read the words, “Dueling Club.”<br/>
“Dueling Club? Like, in second year?” Harry said.<br/>
Dean laughed, and said, “Yeah. Closest thing I could think of to Dumbledore’s Army, and we can operate in the open, this time.”<br/>
“Look, I should have said something, the other night, when we were watching the match, but Hermione’s right: I really don’t have time, this year,” Harry said, and added, earnestly, “Sorry.”<br/>
Dean shrugged, and said, “That’s all right. I’m Club President, actually.”<br/>
Harry’s eyes widened.<br/>
“You?” he said.<br/>
“Why not me?” Dean said coolly.<br/>
“No, I just meant…I didn’t know, that’s all,” Harry said.<br/>
“When Lupin was our professor, I loved Defense Against the Dark Arts. We haven’t had a teacher like him since. Well, you came close, Harry. And I know everyone hoped the D.A. would be, like, a permanent thing. Since its not…well, this probably sounds corny, but my mum’s a social worker, and she’s always saying, ‘Be the change you want to see in the world,’” Dean said. “I think it’s a Gandhi quote.”<br/>
“Gandhi. That’s brilliant,” Harry said, nodding.<br/>
His head was swimming a bit. People wanted the D.A. to be a permanent thing? Why? Who? He thought it was all about getting round Umbridge, what need would there be for it if she was gone? Harry got the inkling that maybe he was wasting his time with the Quidditch captaincy, if what his fellow students really wanted was the D.A….but, then he felt crestfallen that Dean had beat him to it.<br/>
Just like he had kissed Ginny, against a wall, with tongue, in front of everyone…the two affronts seemed connected.<br/>
“Are you using the Room of Requirement, again? Because Malfoy knows about it, that’ll be the first place he tips Snape off to check for meetings,” Harry said.<br/>
“Oh, Professor Snape knows all about it. He’s all for it,” Dean said.<br/>
“What?” Harry said. That, he couldn’t believe…rowing with Malfoy, letting a Gryffindor student start a Dueling Club-had Snape received a brain transplant over the holiday?<br/>
“Well, I just had to butter him up a bit. I brought up the Dueling Club in second year, and how I learned Expelliarmus when he used it on Lockhart, and how it would be nice to have a proper Dueling Club now that we’ve got a proper Defense teacher. He’s been so keen on that job for so long, that’s all it really took,” Dean said. “His only stipulation is that it be open to all four houses, not just Gryffindor, but you know what he really means is not to leave out Slytherin.”<br/>
“So, all it took was a little kissing up?” Harry joked, but Dean looked offended.<br/>
“I wasn’t kissing up. I don’t like him any better than you do, but everyone’s got…a spot, you know? And if you know how to push their buttons, sometimes they become more cooperative,” Dean said. “He loves Defense Against the Dark Arts, and he’s wanted to teach it for a long time-Dueling Club in second year was the only time he got to show up another wizard claiming to be a Defense expert, so I brought it up, like I’d thought he was some great wizard ever since.” Dean shrugged and snorted a small laugh at the idea of anyone admiring Snape.<br/>
“He got Lupin fired. He told everyone that he’s a werewolf. I thought Lupin was your favorite teacher?” Harry said.<br/>
“He is, but life moves on, Harry. Snape is here, Lupin isn’t, and I needed to get something done. Everyone always says that what Voldemort’s always wanted was to attack Hogwarts. The students still need to practice Defense, as much as they can,” Dean said adamantly.<br/>
Harry couldn’t deny the sense that made. In fact, he wished he’d thought of it. And, if Dean could finesse Snape, he’d probably have no problem cozying up to Slughorn. Harry got the feeling he didn’t effectively disguise his annoyance at the man’s affectations, and despite his fond memories of Harry’s mother the man must have known that Harry himself was not fond of him.<br/>
But, as long as he had the Prince, he could still count himself one of Slughorn’s star pupils.<br/>
“Sign me up, then,” Harry said.<br/>
Dean smiled. “Thanks! I think seeing your name will encourage a lot of people to sign up.”<br/>
“Sign up for what?” Hermione said, coming down the stairs. She noticed the sign, and said, “A Dueling Club? Whose idea was this?”<br/>
“All Dean,” Harry said. Dean smiled gratefully.<br/>
“Wonderful! Does Snape know?” Hermione asked.<br/>
“I cleared it with him, but actually, I wanted to go over the material with you. I mean, you and Harry and Ron were at  the front of the D.A., and you know so many clever spells, Hermione,” Dean said.<br/>
Hermione all but blushed, and looked clearly pleased.<br/>
“I’ve certainly got time! I finished all my Ancient Rune translations for this weekend’s homework, so I find myself quite unexpectedly idle!” Hermione said.<br/>
If Ron were present, he would have initiated an eyeroll, but instead Dean laughed appreciatively, and said, “You mean, you didn’t plan it that way so you could have your weekend free?”<br/>
“No! Not at all! Once I got going, I just couldn’t seem to stop translating!” Hermione said.<br/>
Dean looked appreciatively at her, and said, “You know, I think one of those Apprenticeship catalogues McGonagall gave me had an advert from a bloke who’s a Sumerologist-right up your alley.”<br/>
Hermione’s eyebrows raised in interest, and she said, “Oh, yes, that would be. But, I’m looking exclusively at North America, at the moment.”<br/>
“What’s a Sumerologist?” Harry said.<br/>
“An expert in Ancient Sumeria,” Dean said, and quickly turned his attention back to Hermione.<br/>
“That would be lovely! I love a good hymn to Inanna. But, first thing’s first, I’m going to grab my Defense Against the Dark Arts textbooks. Meet me at the lake!” she said, and dashed upstairs.<br/>
“Hermione!” Harry called, and she stopped. He added, “I brought those books Sirius gave me for Christmas-about Defense. You’ll remember. Go up to my room, and you’ll see them.”<br/>
Hermione gave him a meaningful look, and he nodded encouragingly, to silently tell his best friend, Yes, he realized that this was the first time he had said Sirius’s name in the company of her or Ron, and yes, she could have the books.<br/>
“He was innocent, wasn’t he, Sirius Black?” Dean asked.<br/>
“Yes; and he was my godfather,” Harry said.<br/>
“Whoa…sorry, mate,” Dean said. “That duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore, at the Ministry…is that how it happened?”<br/>
Harry hesitated. He didn’t want a free-for-all of questions about Sirius, or Voldemort, or the Department of Mysteries.<br/>
“My dad died fighting him, too,” Dean said. “My mum doesn’t like to talk about it. She doesn’t like magic too much at all, really. But, I turned out a wizard. Neither of us could change it. And there was always half a chance, with my dad being one.”<br/>
“Dean, your dad was in the Order of the Phoenix?” Harry said, astounded. He nodded gravely.<br/>
“Dumbledore’s let you in, hasn’t he? To the new Order of the Phoenix?” Dean said.<br/>
“No,” Harry shook his head. “they wouldn’t let me, Ron, Hermione, or Gin in last year, and I wasn’t even at headquarters this year.”<br/>
“Headquarters?” Dean said, in awe.<br/>
“It was at Sirius’s house, in London,” Harry said.<br/>
“He sounds like a proper warrior. He must’ve known my dad. I bet they were mates,” Dean said, smiling.<br/>
Harry felt a smile spread across his face, and warmth fill his heart. “Yeah, Sirius knew everyone, basically,” Harry said.<br/>
Dean nodded, and Harry could tell that Sirius had been enshrined in Dean’s own private pantheon of ‘the good guys’, and fallen heroes. This gave Harry a small measure of peace. </p><p>Hermione returned from the boys’ dormitory, walking with a Boris Karloff-esque trudge, and a dispirited look on her face and furious eyes. She was hugging a stack of textbooks, her old Defense Against the Dark Arts texts from 5th and 4th years, plus the handsome brown leather-bound books Sirius, and Remus, had gifted Harry with.</p><p>“Hermione, what’s wrong?” Dean asked.</p><p>“The Founders weren’t that smart. Why’d they never reckon on girls sneaking up to boys’ rooms?” She grumbled. </p><p>“You said they thought girls were more trustworthy,” Harry said.</p><p>“With the notable exception of Lavender Brown!” she fumed.</p><p>“To their credit, I don’t think the founders ever met Lavender,” Dean said.</p><p>“Let’s go to the lake,” Hermione said crabbily. Dean raised his eyebrows in curiosity and shot Harry a ‘WTF?’ glance, but followed Hermione out of Gryffindor Tower. </p><p>“Let me carry those,” Harry heard Dean say, and knew she would appreciate it.</p><p> </p><p>Harry, meanwhile, couldn’t resist investigating. He went upstairs, headed to his room, in hopes of discovering what had upset Hermione. He was rewarded with the sight of Lavender in Ron’s Chudley Cannon’s jersey and not a stitch else, the two of them in a state that could only be described as ‘in flagrante delicto’. It became ‘coitus interruptus’, however, when Lavender leapt to her feet, leaving a shocked Ron to scramble to cover himself with his sheets, and she then screeched at Harry,</p><p>“What is this, King’s Cross?! I told Hermione Granger to get lost, now you, too?! Who else is going to pass through?”<br/>
“It happens to be my room!” Harry fired back.</p><p>“Won-Won, do something! Say something!” Lavender whined.</p><p>“Er, Harry, mate…can you give us a mo’?” Ron said weakly. </p><p>Harry felt thunderstruck. Ron and Lavender’s PDAs had seemed like a running joke…it had never occurred to Harry that they were going all the way. Had Dean and Ginny? Had Cho and Cedric? How many people in his midst had crossed that threshold? Was he, Harry, in a minority of people who hadn’t? And why was that? What did Ron, Cedric, and Dean have that he didn’t? If dating at Hogwarts was a league, he would be the Chudley Cannons in rank.</p><p>Harry hurried downstairs, just as Ginny was entering the common room…in fact, two Ginnys! Only when hit by an erring Bludger had Harry experienced this kind of double vision. The girls quickly realized what was going on, and laughed. Clearly, they were used to the Doublemint twins reaction.</p><p>When they laughed, Harry saw their distinctions clearly enough. Ginny’s hair was the very color of a wildfire in full blaze, long and pin straight, and her eyes were a shifting light brown, that varied from resembling honey to whiskey. Her companion’s hair was no less fiery, but fell in bouncy waves around her pointed, vulpine face. Her wide-spaced, deep set eyes glinted flashing blue, like shards of blue glass. </p><p>This, Harry figured, must be Mafalda, the Weasley in Slytherin.</p><p>“Don’t worry-we haven’t come for your soul. People can get awfully superstitious about redheads, you know-especially more than one at a time,” Mafalda said.</p><p>Harry laughed. “Don’t worry- I spend all summer around them, I’m not frightened,” he said.</p><p>He was gratified when she gave a small, soundless laugh that mostly lived in her intensely blue eyes.</p><p>“Well, I’d expect nothing less than chivalry out of a Gryffindor,” she said, and looked pointedly around at the walls. “I say! Is that ‘Maiden With  a Unicorn’ tapestry original? It looks Flemish! The cloth-of-gold must be Charmed to hold up.”<br/>
“You’d have to ask Hermione-she’s the only one around here who’s read ‘Hogwarts, a History,’” Harry said.</p><p>“Oh, I read that ages ago, on the train ride up here my first year,” Mafalda said dismissively. “Is Granger still plodding through it?”</p><p>Harry was starting to like her a bit, but he’d have to rule her out if she was having a go at Hermione. To make sure she knew where he stood, he said,<br/>
“Hermione’s the best witch in our year; I thought everyone knew that, by now.”<br/>
“Of course! Her reputation precedes her! But, I’m in the year ahead of you lot, and we haven’t really got a cleverest. We all just, you know, sort of get on, best we can,” Mafalda said, with a pointedly airy dismissiveness.<br/>
Harry laughed. She didn’t fit the foreboding image of Slytherin house he’d had since 1st year, when he learned that it was generally known as the house of dark wizards and blood purists.</p><p>Ginny said, “Harry, this is my cousin, Mafalda Prewett. I asked her about Malfoy.”</p><p>“Prewett, not Weasley?” Harry asked.</p><p>“Mrs. Weasley is my aunt. Not that I see very much of her. She and Mother don’t get on. Something said at my father’s funeral, I think,” Mafalda said airily, as if she was above knowing too much about it. “I suppose you’ve heard of my father: Gideon the Dark Wizard Slayer, took five Death Eater scum to take him down, blather, blather, blather. One really gets tired of all the inherited encomiums, doesn’t one?”</p><p>“Aren’t you proud?” Harry asked. </p><p>“No, mostly I’m just furious. Every day. At everyone. But, one must get on, mustn’t one?” Mafalda said. </p><p>Harry looked into her blue eyes, and saw that she knew just how he’d felt those weeks after Sirius’s death. So what, he was pardoned and the very Wizarding community who’d thought he was a dark wizard now knew he was innocent? So what, Harry had inherited all that Sirius owned? None of it would bring him back. He understood Mafalda at once-she just wanted her dad, not the strangers coming up to her and telling her who he was, how much she looked like him, how sad or shocked they were when they found out about his death, blather, blather, blather. </p><p>“So, Ginny said that you’re…well-informed,” Harry said.</p><p>Mafalda smirked knowingly. “So, what do you want to know?”</p><p>“Malfoy. Has he seemed fishy this year?” Ginny asked.</p><p>“I think the phrase is ‘humbled and chastened,’” Mafalda said, gloatingly. “He hasn’t got his father to brag about, run to, or hide behind, and it rather dulls his luster, doesn’t it? You probably wouldn’t credit it, but we like to stay neutral in Slytherin.”</p><p>Harry scoffed, and Mafalda raised her eyebrows.</p><p>“Its true. You’ve got as mixed a lot in Slytherin house as any other: people who lost relatives to the Death Eaters, people whose folks were genuinely Imperiused into doing what they did, and its not polite to bring it up. I don’t think Malfoy  expected that, coming to Hogwarts. His Mutty and Vatty filled his head with how he’d be top of the heap. He is, with his lot: the boys whose fathers were high in the Dark Lord’s ranks, and make a good show of being repentant but never gave up hope that Voldemort would rise again,” Mafalda said. “Everyone else rather moves around him.”<br/>
“That can’t be right,” Harry said.<br/>
“What’d you call me here, for, if you don’t believe me?” Mafalda said coolly.<br/>
“Its not that, its just that he always seemed so…popular,” Harry said.<br/>
Mafalda laughed dismissively. “He kicks up a fuss about himself, to be sure. Its pathetic.”</p><p>Harry couldn’t help but smirk. Ginny shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe that he still cared.</p><p>“So, this year, people avoid him even more?” Harry asked.</p><p>“Of course! His father’s in Azkaban! I bet there are apothecaries and dressmakers who won’t deal with Narcissa Malfoy, at this rate,” Mafalda said.</p><p>“I don’t know about dressmakers, but Borgin and Burke’s still take Malfoy gold,” Harry said, and added, “He was trying to buy something that he wanted to smuggle into the school…something of a pair, but he couldn’t take it out of the shop with him. I think he might be acting on Voldemort’s orders.”</p><p>Mafalda looked genuinely thoughtful, and said, “Something of a pair…big…that the Dark Lord would be interested in…Maybe a chest, of some sort? I’ve heard of never-ending chests, that you can imprison someone in. Rather a common tack, for a prisoner you want to torture or question a bit.”<br/>
“Yeah, I’ve seen one. But who would Malfoy want to put in one?” Harry asked.</p><p>“Obviously, Dumbledore. Voldemort’s always wanted him,” Ginny said.</p><p>“But, this object is one of a pair. I’ve only seen one at Hogwarts, and it probably isn’t here anymore, Crouch brought it in and kept Moody in it. And, why would Malfoy need two, if Dumbledore is the target? He’s one wizard,” Harry said.</p><p>“Well,” Mafalda said matter-of-factly, “He wants to kill you, too, doesn’t he? But, you know, just because he couldn’t fit it in the school doesn’t mean it’s a big, unwieldy sort of thing. It could just be a forbidden object, something cursed.”</p><p>Harry frowned in thought, thinking of that. Mafalda was sharp, and her dark magic acumen was a bit off-putting ,but impressive.</p><p>“Have you heard anything about him rowing with Snape? He always liked Malfoy, didn’t he?” Harry said.</p><p>“Well…you could say he always tolerated him. For all he goes on about his father, I don’t think Draco and his father are truly what you’d call close. You can tell that, in a boy, because he looks for a professor to latch onto as a hero,” Mafalda said. </p><p>Harry felt a bit hot under the collar, and wondered if that was what he had done with Lupin. No wonder he didn’t write-Lupin was probably embarrassed by Harry’s behavior, and politely putting distance between them.</p><p>“And that was Snape, for Malfoy?” Harry asked.</p><p>Mafalda nodded emphatically. “Oh, yes. He ran wild with any chance to impress Snape, and he was just aloof enough to make him keep at it, and gave just enough praise to give him hope. But, things are a bit wonky, this year. Snape is still our House Master, but he’s not Potions professor, so Malfoy doesn’t have a chance to impress him. Igraine Inkpen reckons its not detention at all he’s got, but some kind of remedial classes. She’s the one who heard them rowing. Snape kept saying, ‘Let me help you’. Malfoy stormed out and nearly knocked her right into the wall!” Mafalda said.<br/>
Harry frowned. “So, that’s all you know?”<br/>
“Yes. I told you, I don’t have anything to do with him,” Mafalda said.<br/>
Harry supposed not. Dean, Mafalda…it had never occurred to him that he was not the only orphan of the war. People had crowded him and confronted him with his story since he first set foot in the Wizarding world, but his classmates kept their stories hidden, carrying on in silence. Did they think he was a schmuck who wanted the fame and glory, who enjoyed the attention his family’s uncanny tragedy brought him? Harry wanted very much to be someone else.<br/>
“Well, I’d better get back to the good ol’ dungeons,” Mafalda said. “If Snape finds out I was dallying in the Gryffindor Tower, I’ll have to do the walk of shame holding a taper candle, barefoot up the Hogsmeade High Street!”<br/>
Harry and Ginny laughed. Harry watched Mafalda’s retreating form. The light from the fire moved in waves along the rippling surface of her wildfire red hair, as it swayed above the hem of her dark gray school skirt.<br/>
“She’s…not very Slytherin, is she?” Harry said.<br/>
“You mean she looks better in a skirt than Goyle? Go catch that skirt, then,” Ginny said derisively.<br/>
“What? No! I just…I’m not like that,” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny actually looked contrite, and said, “Actually…I know you’re not. Sorry.”</p><p>“Its okay. Did Dean…fancy someone else?” Harry asked.</p><p>“No, it wasn’t anything like that,” Ginny said assuredly. But, Harry noticed she looked much less sure as Dean walked into the common room with Hermione.</p><p>“That’s fascinating! Yes, we must try it!” Hermione was saying animatedly.</p><p>“Try what?” Ginny said, in a hard voice, her eyes aimed heatedly at Dean.</p><p>“Oh, we’re just going over some things for the Dueling Club,” Dean said.</p><p>“You started a Dueling Club?” Ginny said.</p><p>“We live in dangerous times, you know?” Dean said.</p><p>Her gaze ping-ponged between her newly ex-boyfriend, and her best friend. </p><p>“You should join up, Ginny. You loved the D.A.” Hermione said.</p><p>Ginny seemed not to hear her, at first, looking from Hermione to Dean as if restraining herself from confronting them. </p><p>Harry realized that Ginny still had feelings for Dean. He hadn’t had time to truly realize that if she wasn’t with Dean, he could ask her for a walk in Hogsmeade, or to study by the lake, if he wished, nothing tricky, all above board, since she was a free agent. But, was she? </p><p>Who was really with whom? Ron was shagging Lavender, but Hermione was hurt upon discovering them. Hermione and Dean were laughing and spending private time together, but Ginny was looking at Dean as if betrayed.</p><p>Meanwhile, Harry’s dream of wildflower honey on Ginny’s fingers was momentarily displaced by the sway of Mafalda Prewett’s wavy wildfire hair above the hem of her pleated skirt. </p><p>“I’d better change for Quidditch practice,” He announced to no one in particular. </p><p>“Yeah, same,” Ginny said heatedly, and headed for the stairs. </p><p>Despite her stormy stride, Lavender Brown, who was somehow buttoning her blouse and finger-combing her wavy nut brown hair all at the same time, still beat her to the first step and hurried past Ginny to the girls’ dormitory.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny was quite sure Celestina Warbeck had a cover of an old jazz standard called, ‘I Only Have Myself to Blame.’ Her mum would know. However, she wasn’t in a hurry to write her mum for advice on this matter. How would she frame it? ‘So, I’m in love with Harry and always have been, my boyfriend of all people figured it out and chucked me, now I’m mad as Hell because he seems to have moved on to my best friend, the most clever witch in the bloody school, who dated the most famous Quidditch player in the bleeding world.’<br/>
If there was one thing Wizards and Witches found attractive, it was power. That was why Dumbledore couldn’t be denied even by those who thought he was barmy, why Gilderoy Lockhart’s wild claims of taming wild dark creatures had won him just as much fame as his smile, and why Harry was a legend before he could even speak for defeating Voldemort. Power spoke for itself, literally: your skin and bones just knew when you were in the presence of someone with a great and terrible magic. Hermione was such a witch, and it didn’t take long upon meeting her to feel and know it. Of course Dean, curious and subtly powerful himself, would be a good fit with her.<br/>
They had never been a real fit, Ginny admitted, as she pulled on her Quidditch sweater and breeches. He was up when she was down, and vice versa, and she held in her stormier moods and most biting, venomous sarcasm when he was around, to be the girl she thought he deserved. He wanted to soothe and caress her, but Ginny didn’t feel she needed that. If she was in a bad mood, she wanted to punch someone, not a damn hug.<br/>
Did that make her a bad person? A bad girl? A bad girlfriend? Ginny tugged her sweater down punishingly. She sighed. She felt like a pot boiling over…especially when she thought about Harry watching Mafalda as she walked away. Then, she reminded herself that she wasn’t a pathetic first year, hiding out in the bushes by Hagrid’s cottage hoping to see him, writing about him in a diary, anymore.<br/>
Ginny needlessly kicked her school trunk in frustration…and its threadbare cloth ripped.<br/>
‘What do you expect, genius? Its from a charity shop, just like everything else you own,’ she chided herself, thinking with distaste of the out of date bell bottom jeans and peasant dresses her mother obliviously bought for her with Muggle currency out of some kind of parish collection the vicar sent round. Witches and wizards had been hiding their true lifestyle by posing as the eccentric village poor for centuries, but Ginny was sick of being either forgotten or pitied, an outcast in both worlds.<br/>
What did she want? Why was she angry? Was she jealous about Dean, Harry, or both?<br/>
‘Just focus on Quidditch,’ Ginny told herself, and took comfort that she would feel like herself again on her broom, in the air.<br/>
 </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Cho gives Harry some advice; Harry reprimands Ginny, and things quickly get heated</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The news that Dean had resigned from the team was met by an exasperated exclamation of,<br/>
“So, what are we going to do, now?!” from Peakes. </p><p>Coote rolled his eyes in a sort of long-suffering way, as if he expected a cock-up of this order, any day now. Even Katie looked concerned, but ever the team player, she was waiting to see what Harry’s next step would be. Ginny, also, looked on with an open expression, listening to see what would come next.</p><p>“Look, that’s Quidditch, you lot. Lineup changes happen all the time,” Ron said reasonably, and Harry felt grateful.</p><p>“Is that right, Good King Ron?” Peakes said, referencing the Slytherins’ ‘Weasley is Our King’ chant of the year before.</p><p>Ron’s face when pale and murderous. “What’d you say, you stringy, lazy-eyed little shit?” Ron demanded, getting in the much smaller Peakes’ face.</p><p>“Oy!” Ginny said, stretching out her arms, and putting her hands on both boys’ chests, her eyes turning hard and smoldering, the very color of brandy.</p><p>“Harry?” Katie asked, softly, mildly, but plaintively.</p><p>“Look, I can’t do this for you. I can come up with plays, take you through them, remind you to stick to them, but I can’t make you care. When I came to this school, I had a great captain, and  I joined a great team,” Harry said. “Maybe because Gryffindor had lost out on the House Cup and the Quidditch Cup so many times, once we started winning, we didn’t want to stop. Everyone was motivated, and we looked out for each other. We wanted to get to the same place together. Obviously, without a third Chaser, we can’t properly run through any plays, today. Go back up to the castle, and on your way, I want you to think about why you wanted to be on this team in the first place. It better be because of how much you care about Gryffindor. Every time we win, and even when we lose well, after a good showing, with respect to our opponent, it does Gryffindor credit. That better be the only reason any of you are here. Because it’s the only thing that’s going to get us all to the same place, together.”</p><p>Peakes, Coote, Ron and even Ginny looked contrite. Katie was smiling, as if Harry had lived up to Wood’s and Johnson’s standard, at last. </p><p>Ginny turned her head, and said, “Harry, look.<br/>
Harry looked in the same direction, his stomach fell to his feet as he saw Cho and the Ravenclaw team coming to the field. He could have stood there and watched the sunset shine fiery gold on her pale skin forever. She shook out her long hair and wound it into a messy knot with a blue velvet scrunchie. </p><p>‘Well, come on then,’ Harry told his feet, and willed them to walk over to her.<br/>
“Erm, Cho? What’s this about, then? Its our practice hour,” Harry said.</p><p>Biggerstaff, Ross, Lingonberry, Nancarrow, and the Beaters Barnaby and Broadwater all flanked her, and looked at Harry warily, like predatory cats stiffening at the arrival of a lone animal at their watering hole. Cho glanced at them signaling that it was okay for Harry to approach. He was taken aback by her excellent, near telepathic command of her team. She broke off from them and began walking to the stands, indicating that Harry should follow.</p><p>“I think there’s been a mix-up. I was told that Gryffindor practice was cancelled because you’ve got a vacancy on the team. Bit early in the year, isn’t it?” Cho said conversationally.</p><p>“Er, yeah, well, Dean left to start a Dueling Club,” Harry said.</p><p>She nodded approvingly, and said, “Oh, yes, I heard about that. Well, that’s a bit more important than Quidditch, isn’t it?”</p><p>“D’you think so?” Harry said. </p><p>Cho looked at him with some surprise, and said, “Harry, I thought you knew how important it is to me, that people be able to defend themselves properly.”<br/>
Harry felt gutted, and remembered Ginny’s fiery defense of Cho to Peakes: How would he feel if Voldemort had killed the person he loved? He’d never been able to talk to Cho about Cedric, although  that was clearly what she had wanted, the year before. For the first time, Harry felt that he had failed her; Nearly Headless Nick, and Luna had answered his questions and talked to him about Sirius…what if they hadn’t? Would he have been angry with them? Would he still feel as sodden and freshly miserable as he did before their conversations? Is that how he had left Cho? </p><p>“No, of course I do,” Harry said hurriedly. Silence crept in, as it always did between them, but Cho asked,</p><p>“Harry, is everything all right…I mean, with the team? The game last week felt…off.”</p><p>Finally, someone he could talk to about his captaincy-even if she was, technically a rival, and technically, his ex-girlfriend.</p><p>“I’m not Oliver Wood, is what’s wrong. I haven’t got the ideas, or the passion, or something,” Harry said.</p><p>“Bosh,” Cho said definitively. She sounded so mature and confident, and Harry felt a bit better. He looked at her with a quizzical smile. Cho added, “Quidditch makes you happy, everyone knows that.”</p><p>“Yeah, but I can’t seem to…take the lead, I guess,” Harry said.</p><p>“Harry, you were the lead instructor of our defense group-so you’re not lacking there, either,” Cho said.</p><p>“We lost the match, and even in practice, we can’t get it together. Dean’s left, Ron’s away with the faeries, Katie’s our best player but she’s not a self starter, she needs strong leadership, Ginny and Peakes can’t get along, and Coote is so far up Peakes-” Harry fumed, until Cho held up her hand before he vulgarly described the orifice of Peakes’s in which Coote was burrowed</p><p>“I get the picture,” Cho said. She bit her lip decisively, and said, “Do you want my advice? Captain to Captain?”</p><p>Harry nodded. “Sure. Your team would follow you 40 years in the desert, looks like,” he said.</p><p>For the first time, ever, Cho laughed at his joke. It was like one of his third year fantasies: he and Cho were alone, and she was focused totally on him, making him feel better with every word out of her cute, pink mouth, and laughing at his joke with stars in her eyes. Why couldn’t this have happened before Hermione hexed her best friend with a rash of pimples, and they broke up?</p><p>“Well, thanks,” Cho said. “But, what you see now didn’t start with me-actually, for a long time, I was the problem.”<br/>
“What d’you mean? You’re brilliant! You made the winning catch,” Harry said.</p><p> </p><p>Cho sighed, and said, “Harry, come off it. You know how I was last year. I wasn’t myself. Everything made me think of Cedric, and Voldemort. Everything reminded me that Cedric was gone, and this…infamous evil had invaded our school, reached out, and taken him. Everywhere I walked made me remember something, or feel freaked out about how things had changed.”</p><p>Again, Harry felt guilty. He’d let Ron call Cho a “hosepipe”, behind her back, and been paralyzed with ineptitude in her presence when she cried.</p><p>“How’d you get over that?” he asked. Cho’s eyes widened, and he saw at once that his word choice had been all wrong.</p><p>“I wouldn’t say that I am…but, calling a thing by its proper name helps. When we see upsetting things, like death, and battle, it traumatizes us. All the things you feel afterwards-sadness, anger, anxiety, lethargy, isolation-is called trauma. When you have trauma, its like…a wound, that becomes a scar. And you have to treat the scar for a bit, you know, so that it heals properly, and even though it will always be there, after a while, its just apart of you,” Cho said.</p><p>Harry didn’t realize that he was touching his own scar until Cho said, alarmed, “Oh, no, Harry, I didn’t mean…”</p><p>“No, no, its all right.  I always used to do that, when I was a kid. When I wasn’t doing much of anything else, I’d mess about with my scar. I actually used to like it. I couldn’t believe that I got it the night my parents died…because, it was just apart of me,” Harry said. “But, I didn’t remember anything about their deaths…”</p><p>“Its different, with Cedric. You saw it.  You’ve seen so much, Harry,” Cho said sadly. “Its only natural, if those things affect you. That’s how they work.”</p><p>“Its not fair. Its like he gets to have all the power. He controls what we think, what we’re afraid of,” Harry said.</p><p>“No!” Cho said firmly. “It doesn’t have to be that way! When you control your mind, you control what you think, and how you feel.”<br/>
“I can’t. I tried Occlumency, with Snape, it was a shit-show,” Harry said.</p><p>Cho laughed at his colorful language, and said, “No, I don’t mean magic. Although, I find that it does help with that. I mean, meditation. To bring things back round to your question about the team, Professor Flitwick called us all round his office, the whole team, and they all asked me how I was feeling, and the team told me how concerned they’d been for me, and wanted to know what they could do to help me. You have no idea how much I needed that. I had no idea, until the very moment of. And I just let it all out…everything, about Cedric, and you, and…well, anyway, ever since, we started having mindfulness time in Ravenclaw, and the team does Yoga, since that’s a more physical form of meditation. Flitwick says it should help our minds recover from the trauma of Voldemort’s return, and the war.”</p><p>“I don’t know anything about meditation,” Harry said.</p><p>“You should come by Mindfulness Club in Ravenclaw Tower. Its open to all houses, actually. Haven’t you seen the notices? When you focus out of your thoughts and on your breathing, your thoughts just sort of rise as they will. Tension comes from trying to force yourself into not thinking about something, or thinking about only one thing and blocking everything else out, or letting a memory play so strongly that it takes you right back to the moment, and you’re just as scared, or as angry, as when it happened. If you let them play out, your thoughts, without becoming emotionally involved, you find that they’re not as strong,” She said.</p><p>“What if I don’t want to forget? I know it sounds funny, but…I don’t want to lose how much it hurts that Sirius is dead. Then, there will be nothing left of him,” Harry said.</p><p>“Sirius Black?” Cho asked, with a frown.</p><p>“He was my godfather. He died, last year, right before the year’s end feast,” Harry said.</p><p>Cho looked aghast. “Harry! Why didn’t you tell me?”</p><p>“You broke up with me. About Marietta and Hermione,” Harry said.</p><p>“No, I did not! We had an argument! You stopped speaking to me, school let out, you blew me off on the train at the start of term this year, and this is the first time we’ve spoken all year!” Cho said.</p><p>Harry’s head was spinning. So…Cho didn’t think she had broken up with him? Had he ever broken up with her? Were they still together? Harry was horrified. If that was how she looked at things…then by Cho’s estimation, he must be twice as poxy a boyfriend as he was a Quidditch captain.<br/>
She sighed, shook her head, and said, “This isn’t about me. My point is, Harry, I had no idea. You can’t go on like that…keeping so much inside. Trust me, it all spills out. And I don’t think you’ll lose your godfather if you stop mourning him. Then, you can just remember him, without fighting through the pain.”</p><p>Harry didn’t know what to say. What Cho described sounded like a fairy tale, or someone else’s life. It didn’t seem possible for him. </p><p>She smiled sadly, as if reading his doubtful thoughts, and said, “I know it sounds mad, when you first  hear it. I was skeptical too. I mean, my family don’t go in for things like that. My parents work in computers, so, you can imagine. I mean, my granny is Buddhist, sort of, but she doesn’t go about meditating: she has a Quan Yin on her coffee table, and we all come round to her house for New Year, that’s about the extent of her religiosity. But meditation isn’t religious or spiritual if you don’t want it to be. It’s a cognitive exercise, training your mind, just like we train our bodies in Quidditch.”</p><p>“I’ll think about it,” Harry said.</p><p>“But, you’ll probably join the Dueling Club instead?” Cho guessed.</p><p>Harry laughed. He had to admit, she’d called it.</p><p>“I’m sorry I wasn’t…better,” Harry said.</p><p>“For me, or better after the Tournament?” Cho asked.</p><p>“Both, I reckon,” Harry said.</p><p>“That’s okay, Harry,” Cho said kindly, looking into his eyes to show him that she meant it. They held each other’s gaze as the moment lingered, but for once it wasn’t awkward. Harry could feel the moment gently ending, after a while, and knew that he and Cho were ending there, too. She added,<br/>
“I better head back to my team. I hope you try Mindfulness Club!”</p><p> </p><p>Cho jogged back to her team, but looked over her shoulder and waved for a bit before turning back to them. Harry waved until she stopped, and then walked reluctantly back to his Gryffindors.<br/>
“Conspiring with the enemy?” Peakes asked.<br/>
“Cho isn’t the enemy, she’s another Hogwarts Quidditch player,” Ginny fired back at him.<br/>
“Weasley! That’s enough! I’m Captain, here!” Harry snapped.<br/>
He was sick of their squabbling, it was almost as bad as Ron and Hermione, and it was embarrassing that Harry didn’t have the same command over the Gryffindors that Cho had over the Ravenclaws.<br/>
Ron looked aimlessly  around for aid-Harry and Ginny had never disagreed before, and he was at a loss. Harry, however, could look nowhere but into Ginny’s eyes. Her glare was trained on him, and her eyes caught the pale orange light of the setting sun, holding it and diffusing it into an amber blaze. Harry felt riddled with lancing shafts of heat, shot through with it like when the honeyed tip of the apple had touched his lips, held by Ginny’s small, delicate, freckle-spotted hands.<br/>
“Then act like it, for once,” she said scornfully. There was something so intimate about having her angry at him. Anger wasn’t after all, indifference.<br/>
“Gin, back off,” Ron said, but without much force.<br/>
Coote and Peakes were laughing with relish. Katie looked dismayed.<br/>
Harry pointed towards the commentary box, and said, “Ginny, I need to speak to you.”<br/>
“Fine! Its not like we’re doing any flying!” Ginny fumed, and marched ahead of Harry up to the box.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny felt wild. Aside from watching her first-cousin’s skirt walk out of Gryffindor Tower right in front of her, Harry had told off the whole team for not caring enough about Gryffindor, then waltzed off with Cho Chang as if they were such a sad, sorry team he needed to ask a rival Captain for advice on how to handle them. This was about as far from Ginny’s fantasies of being on the Gryffindor Quidditch team as she could land. She was turning red, she knew by her blushing hands, and she could feel cold sweat beneath her robes even though they hadn’t done any drills, she’d never even mounted her broom.<br/>
She was counting on practice to smooth out the tension she felt from seeing Harry look at Mafalda, and Dean go off  with Hermione. Instead, she had to watch Harry walk off with Cho. They had probably patched things up, why wouldn’t they have? He had fancied her for ages…It was always her. Why was Ginny surprised? He’d admitted that he had forgotten the Chamber of Secrets, forgotten saving her life, forgotten how he had smiled and come over to play Exploding Snap with her when everyone else avoided her, radiating fear and mistrust of her. She’d thought it meant something, but quickly found out that wasn’t the case, it wasn’t how Harry worked: he could be kind, generous, heroic, and principled towards anyone who needed it at the moment, that didn’t mean they would enter his trust or have his time and affection.<br/>
Ginny marched up the commentary box stairs, out of breath and fighting tears.</p><p> </p><p>When they reached the top of the commentary box, Ginny turned to face Harry. Her chest was falling and rising rapidly, she was somehow both pale and blushing furiously at the same time, and the small, fine red hairs around her forehead were darkened with sweat. Her eyes were bright. Harry felt something vaguely familiar stirred by the sight of her like that…then he placed it: it reminded him of how she had looked when she came to in the Chamber of Secrets.<br/>
Harry didn’t like to think of that night. In fact, it was sometimes a bit hard to remember, but now everything rushed back, clearly. The scariest part of it all wasn’t Tom Riddle appearing out of the diary, and turning out to be Voldemort. The scariest part was thinking that Ginny would die if he didn’t reach her, finding her inert form and thinking that she was dead, pleading and hoping that she would live. He had so wanted her to live…and she had. Every time she darted into Harry’s notice, he felt a shadow of that wish for her well-being, but now he felt the full horror of his fear from that night that she would die.<br/>
He hadn’t truly appreciated before that she was that same little girl…and, yet, she wasn’t. She was alive. She had lived, and she was all grown up, and she was the same girl he dreamed about, who made him feel such heat and longing by merely shaking her hair out of her eyes, smiling, or laughing. As long as Ginny continued to live, he wanted to watch her. She was the only prayer that he had ever prayed, and her whole life was its answer.<br/>
He hadn’t been ready to feel that, before-the weight of the fear and horror. Perhaps he had started to love her there, in the Chamber, but the trauma got in the way, even more palpably than it had with Cho, about Cedric.</p><p>“What?!” Ginny snapped. “What are you looking at me like that, for? What have you got to say? Fine, go ahead, blame me, but Peakes is a bloody misogynist! Every time he makes one of his little jokes, its at a woman’s expense, as if they’re these ridiculous, inept, inferior creatures! That’s sexual harassment! You know that at a Muggle school, an athlete could sue for being made to play in an environment like that! If you say I have to find a way to get along with that sexist, then I quit! Its not worth it! Its not like I’ll ever play pro, anyway, I might as well-”<br/>
“Why not?” Harry said calmly. Ginny stopped talking, and looked stunned.<br/>
Harry went on, “I think you could. You’re good. The team’s shit, but you’re good.”<br/>
Ginny laughed incredulously, and said, “I didn’t think you knew the team was shit.”<br/>
“Gin, how could I not know the team is shit?” Harry said.<br/>
“Then, how come you let us play Ravenclaw, when I told you that we weren’t ready?” Ginny said.<br/>
“Well, I didn’t know it then,” Harry said, to which Ginny responded with a smug smirk. “Yeah, yeah,” Harry said. “Have you got any more sage advice?”<br/>
“Between me and Cho, that’s a lot of sage advice,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Well, I don’t know if what works for Ravenclaw will work for us. Meditation, mindfulness, Yoga: I’m sure they work, but I don’t see any of us committing the way you need to for it to work as it should,” Harry said.<br/>
“They’re the brainy sort. We’re more…physical,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Right,” Harry said. “Look, I’ll deal with Peakes, but can you give me the chance to do it? Maybe if they could believe in me, a little, how we play would improve, too.”<br/>
“I believe in you, Harry,” Ginny said passionately. </p><p>Her amber eyes were trained on his, again, but this time, not in anger. She had a look of such redolent understanding, that Harry hoped it was all encompassing: that she understood, even when he shouted, got sarcastic, said nothing, walked away, and failed, that she knew how he really felt, and that he had never really forgotten her. Ginny’s hair came untucked from her ear, tumbled over her shoulder, and caught the light of the setting sun behind her. She was framed in orange and gold, pink, and the blood red oval of the sun itself cradled by mountains. It was like the signal Harry’s body was waiting for: warmth filled his stomach, his hands and the top of his head tingled, and saliva pooled hungrily in his mouth as his mouth fell open.<br/>
He heard Ginny’s labored breathing, and saw her chest rise and fall. Before he knew it, he was moving closer, closer to her…the warmth of her skin flared against his face, his nose brushed her’s, and his lips skimmed her delicate pink lips. His skin thrilled at the feeling of Ginny’s gloved hands framing his face…she then hurriedly stripped her gloves off, and Harry almost flinched away from the intensity of her bare hands cradling his face. She caressed his face and neck, and Harry shivered, closing his eyes against the prickling intensity. She pressed her lips against his, and Harry felt the same delight that he did when his broom climbed the air, as if he was in another world that he felt more at home in than the earth below, a whole new set of instincts was kicking in, rising from his belly, spreading frissons of feverish heat throughout his whole body.<br/>
Ginny led the kiss, working his lips with her’s, and Harry soon fell into the rhythm she set. Her soft, small, warm body shifted against his, and Harry felt such excitement that it seemed akin to fear. Ginny’s warmth and softness and wildflower smell was everywhere, was his whole world.<br/>
Then, she put her hand on his chest, and pulled away. She backed away, into the distance between them.<br/>
Harry steadied himself on the commentator’s desk. He was reeling, gasping. His skin was screaming for her hands, her lips, her hair, her body.<br/>
Ginny was catching her breath, too, and her long red hair fell in a veil over her face, separating them.<br/>
“No,” she said.<br/>
“Huh? What?” Harry asked.<br/>
“I don’t need you. And I don’t want to need you. I don’t want anything from you. I spent so long, wanting…no, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter! Go off with Cho, Mafalda, or whoever you want… I can’t, I just can’t,” she said hurriedly.<br/>
“Ginny…I have dreams about you,” Harry confessed.<br/>
She looked at him with an expression he couldn’t read, and a frown…then she walked away, leaving Harry in the commentator’s box, alone.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ginny heals her mind, with a little help from Luna and Cho</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Two chapter updates, tonight, so please enjoy chapter 9 and continue on to chapter 10!</p><p>"Chop wood, and carry water" and "Monkey mind, horse thought" are two actual Zen proverbs. They felt very appropriate for Ravenclaw house! All the philosophers named on the common room bookshelf are real, too:)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No one knew. As Ginny walked the corridors of Hogwarts the next day, it was clear that no one could see the turmoil beneath her skin, the frustration that made her feel indifferent towards all she should do, and clumsy at all she tried. Professor Snape kept correcting her pronunciation of Latin defensive spells in Defense Against the Dark Arts, as if he was on a mission to prove that she was common and ignorant. Slughorn had no comments about her Serenity potion, and why would he have? Her moonstone had clumped and turned brown, the whole potion resembling a failed pasta with overdone mushrooms. She flicked her wand too hard on an evanescing charm in Flitwick’s class; instead of disappearing, the water in the bowl hit Oonagh Crowhurst in the face with a slapping splash. She had silently glared daggers into Ginny, and silently changed seats. Ginny didn’t have the heart to snap, ‘Get over it’, ‘I didn’t realize cold water burns’, or ‘Sorry, did it wash off one of your three layers of concealer’? as she normally would have responded to that sort of passive aggression. She had been holding people off with a sharp tongue and a ready Bat Bogey Hex since the end of her third year, at least ,when she finally got tired of crying, or trying to make friends in spite of her family’s poor reputation. After all, she didn’t have a diary to confide these slights in, anymore, with Tom gone-she had to take care of herself.</p><p>However, as Ginny went about her day, she barely noticed the other students, barely heard the roar of people in the corridor around her. All she could think was, ‘Why did I do that?’</p><p>She thought she knew herself. What she was capable of, what she would and wouldn’t put up with. But she didn’t know why she had kissed Harry, or why she had pushed him away. It was the first time she didn’t feel in control of her own actions since she woke up covered in blood and feathers, and started to suspect that she had killed Hagrid’s rooster. Ginny was shaken.</p><p>Ginny kept walking, and noticed Luna Lovegood passing out fliers. She was twirling this way and that, calling out in a clarion sing-song, “Sound bath healing, in Ravenclaw Tower, open to all four houses! Sound bath healing!”</p><p>Her white-blonde hair swished round as she turned on her heels. Her entreaties and fliers were mostly being ignored, and Ginny even heard some under-the-breath laughter as people looked at Luna over their shoulders, then looked at each other and laughed. Ginny remembered how it felt to overhear people laughing at her, and catching the words, “…basilisk…” “opened the Chamber of Secrets…” and “freak”. She rushed over to Luna, and said,<br/>
“I’ll take one!”</p><p>“Oh, Ginevra! Hi! We haven’t spoken all year!” Luna said brightly, her light blue eyes boring into Ginny’s with her characteristic look of unflinching curiosity.<br/>
Ginny’s stomach did a morris dance of guilt. “Erm, yeah. I’ve been busy. O.W.L.s, and Quidditch, you know. And, I broke up with Dean. Well, he broke up with me, actually.”<br/>
She wasn’t sure why she mentioned the last part. She thought maybe it had something to do with the time-honored belief that ‘girl talk’ made this sort of experience more bearable, but Luna Lovegood was not the obvious candidate for sharing woes and bonbons with.</p><p>“I’m sure you’ll get over it soon. You didn’t date very long. You didn’t date Michael Corner very long either. Still, these things do injure us on the etheric level. Your aura’s looking a bit…swampy,” Luna said, nodding.</p><p>“My aura?” Ginny said.</p><p>“Oh, yes! In the Vedic system, it has five layers, and something is really clogged in your Pranamaya kosha! Maybe you should wear a lapis stone, to free up your Vishuddha chakra,” Luna said.</p><p>“Erm, Luna, I’m not sure what language that is, but according to Professor Snape I don’t even manage English very well- can you say it so I can understand?” Ginny asked.</p><p>“Something’s got you feeling…blocked. Trapped. You can’t breathe freely. You’ve got cloggy chakras all around, but its worst in your throat. The sound bath should fix all that. Not right away, mind-but you should start to feel a bit better each time you come round,” Luna said brightly. </p><p>“Oh…well, okay,” Ginny said.</p><p> She couldn’t argue that she felt off. She had kissed Harry, which was mad, and pushed him away, which was even madder. Her eleven year old self would be kicking her, 15 year old Ginny’s shins and stubbing her toe, if she knew the state of affairs: ‘We had a chance at Harry Potter and you ran away?! Stupid cow!’ Losing to Ravenclaw, rowing with Peakes, and O,W.L. studies, breaking up with Dean, and the way in which he had done it, as if he felt half-way sorry for her, and was putting something ailing out of its misery, Slughorn introducing Cho Chang to Gwenog Jones, Ginny’s hero, and Harry walking with Cho immersed in a deep talk on the sunset dappled grass of the Quidditch pitch….yes, between all of these events and the way they made her feel, Ginny felt pretty lousy. What could it hurt to try some mad Ravenclaw experiment to feel better?</p><p>“So, what’s a sound bath, anyway?” Ginny asked. </p><p>She hoped it didn’t involve stripping down and dancing naked to some old hippie standard like ‘Spirit in the Sky’ or ‘Season of the Witch,’ although she doubted Luna would mind that sort of thing. Thankfully, she couldn’t see Flitwick allowing such goings on in Ravenclaw Tower.</p><p>“Oh, you’ll see,” Luna said, with an air of delighted mystery. </p><p>Ginny followed Luna’s snow blonde hair up the grand staircase. She was used to going up to Gryffindor Tower through the portrait hole behind the Fat Lady, who glanced right at her and said, pointedly, “Ahem, Miss Weasley? Going the wrong way?” </p><p>Ginny ignored her-she could be so nosy, especially if she recognized a student by family name and resemblance. Following Luna, she turned an unfamiliar corridor walled with a tapestry of the ancient Alexandrian Magi consulting star charts and strange tools, and a bust of Rowena Ravenclaw. Rendered in pale stone, she was a handsome woman with a thin face and high cheekbones, her hair bound in a braid, wearing a small tiara.</p><p>“What is enlightenment?” the bust asked.</p><p>“To chop wood, and carry water,” Luna piped up merrily, and the floor beneath the stand upon which the bust stood moved to reveal a passageway.</p><p>“Cool,” Ginny said, “but what’s that mean the ‘chop wood and carry water’, bit?” Ginny said.</p><p>“Exactly as I said,” Luna said. “Come along!”</p><p>The first thing Ginny noticed about the Ravenclaw tower was the large, open windows. The view of the lake and the mountains was spectacular, and unlike in Gryffindor Tower, one could hear the rush of the ever-wuthering wind, and the music of singing sirens in the lake. It created an ethereal lullaby. The walls were covered in blue silk, and there was a blue and gold carpet embroidered with the house motto, “Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.” There was a nook of bookshelves and armchairs upon a dais. Ginny scanned the titles of the books, and saw the names of philosophers like Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Suzuki, Kierkegaard, and William James. </p><p>“Just a bit of light reading?” Ginny quipped.</p><p>“Muggles are lightyears ahead of Wizards when it comes to philosophy. To know magic is good, but to know your own mind is how civilization collectively evolves,” Luna said.</p><p>Ginny didn’t know what to say to that. “Right,” she said, erring on the side of caution by agreeing. She hoped she didn’t sound like Harry, half-heartedly joining in when Ron fanboyed over the Chudley Cannons.</p><p>People poured into the common room, including Cho Chang. Ginny felt her heart leap like a frog into her chest. Cho…whom Harry had watched and wanted as long and as intensely as Ginny had him. Anyone could see it, and everybody knew it. And what was not to love? Cho had spent the year before mourning Cedric Diggory, but she had seemed to come out of the maelstrom of her grief and was strong and well again. Her effervescent, delicate, graceful beauty had become tempered by her pain into something more mature and even more affecting than before-she had gone from a nymph to a goddess. She strode into the room in her new determined and self-possessed way, her long black hair rippling down her back and around her shoulders, wearing a Quidditch sweater and Levi’s jeans. Real Levi’s…not faded and patched bell-bottoms from<br/>
Oxfam. Ginny wanted to just disappear…</p><p>Cho spied Ginny and Luna, and frowned in confusion a bit at the sight of Ginny, a Gryffindor.</p><p>“Weasley!” she said cheerfully, greeting her like a fellow Quidditch player, an equal. “You joined Mindfulness Club?”</p><p>“Her chakras were in dire need of etheric intervention,” Luna said.</p><p>“Oh,” Cho said. “well, you’re in for a treat! Relaxation heals a lot of ills. I have a feeling this is going to be one of our more popular experiences. We’re trying to keep things varied.”</p><p>“Oh… are you club president?” Ginny asked.</p><p>Cho nodded proudly. “I’m so proud that Flitwick trusted me with it! I mean, I would be a wreck if we hadn’t started doing all this, and to be the one in charge…”</p><p>She sounded so humble, sweet, and genuine. On top of all that, she was gorgeous. Ginny felt small and flawed by comparison. </p><p>“Well, I hope you enjoy it! I’ve got to set up the bowls. Pick your spots,” Cho said.</p><p>Luna lay like a starfish on a spot in the carpet. Embarrassment squirmed and surprise flared within Ginny, until she noticed that all the other Ravenclaws were doing the same.<br/>
‘When in Rome…or, rather, Ravenclaw,’ she figured, and lay down on the carpet, too. She kept one eye winked open, and observed Cho reaching into  what looked rather like a bowling bag that surely had an enlargement charm on it, as she pulled several large translucent selenite bowls out of it. When she was done, she addressed everyone with a serene smile, and said, </p><p>“Thank you for coming! Today we’re going to be relaxing to the music of the sound bowls. Focus only on each breath, letting the music reach out to you,” Cho said. “Take five deep breaths. All right? First one, breath deeply into your abdomen, feel your belly fill with air, and then feel your abdominal muscles release the air and settle once more…”</p><p>Ginny did as she was instructed. Ginny hadn’t felt so calm following instructions since the D.A. Maybe the way she had admired and trusted Harry last year in the D.A. had confused her, made her think she wasn’t over her feelings for him. She had moved on, she had worked hard to…how could she have slid back into old habits. As she lay on the carpet, breathing, a montage of thoughts rose in her mind: Harry, electrifyingly charismatic and full of energy as he led them all through the Patronus Charm, Harry’s eyes smoldering with sunset light in their emerald green depths as he confessed, “I have dreams about you.” </p><p>But that couldn’t be true, Ginny’s mind rebelled at the thought, and she saw her diary’s yellowed pages, smelled its palpable perfume of aged parchment, and saw Tom’s words: ‘He’ll never love you.’</p><p>Ginny gasped. She felt breathless, and vulnerable. Tom! She hadn’t thought of him in so long. She’d always been able to feel his presence when she was possessed, even when she was awake and in control of her body, she could feel him like a shadow, a pair of eyes, a palpable and breathing, invisible other. He felt close again. No! Her mind was her own, she’d fought for it! Ginny opened her eyes in alarm.</p><p>She looked around, and saw the supine Ravenclaw students, the view of the cloudy sky, dark mountains, and glittering argent waters of the lake. She took deep breaths.</p><p>Luna opened her eyes, and looked over at Ginny. “Monkey mind, horse thoughts,” she said, with compassionate understanding.</p><p>“Huh?” Ginny whispered.</p><p>“Your thoughts are running this way and that, to the past, and to the cares of your next destination. But, the tension you feel, in your heart, and your lungs…that’s your body trying to go somewhere it can’t go. You can only be here, now,” Luna said sweetly.</p><p>Ginny smiled. “You’re brilliant, you know that, Luna?”</p><p>“Shh,” Luna said gently, her finger to her lips.</p><p>Cho waved her wand over the bowls. One by one, they lit up, flaring into colors: blue, violet, red, gold, green, etc. One by one, they chimed clear and calming musical tones, sounding almost like church bells.</p><p>Ginny lay back, breathed deeply, and let the music flood her body. She felt chills of hot and cold like a fever, and lay under their wake as they crashed within her body and soothed her. She understood, now, why she had rebelled against the feel of Harry’s lips, his hands, the heated and intense look in his beautiful, jewel-like eyes, and his plaintive, earnest confession, “I dreamed of you.”</p><p>Tom had taunted her with her confessions about Harry, told her that she was small, dirty, poor, unimportant, that Harry would never love her, that she would die in the Chamber and no one would ever find her, she was the last person Harry would look for. He had remembered her, and rescued her…but Ginny had never quite shaken the idea that he didn’t care about her, and she didn’t deserve him<br/>
.<br/>
That wasn’t her idea! Tom had placed it in her mind, and she felt the idea losing its power as she breathed, relaxed, and listened to the enchanted chimes of the sound bowls. </p><p>“Very good,” Cho said soothingly. “Well done, everyone!” </p><p>Ginny sat up, as did the rest of the Mindfulness Club. What? It was over? Already? She could have laid beneath the music forever.</p><p>“Let’s take some grounding breaths, now, and then get back on our feet,” Cho said.</p><p>Everyone sat cross legged, and took deep breaths whose even rhythm sounded like an ocean wave. When the club adjourned, Ginny felt as if she had gone on a long flight over the meadows between her home and Ottery St. Catchpole, or had a warm bath with rose oil. She felt good! And it had been a long time since she truly had. Not since the Department of Mysteries, she now realized. Or, maybe since Tom…when had it truly begun? All Ginny knew was that she felt a clarity and relaxation she hadn’t had even a glimpse of for a long time.</p><p>Luna and Ginny got to their feet.</p><p>“Do you want to talk about your feelings?” Luna said.</p><p>“Never,” Ginny said.</p><p>Luna nodded, as if she expected that. </p><p>“But, I hope you feel better,” Luna said.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The One Where Hermione Figures It All Out...</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry continued to have success in Potions, following the Prince’s advice and brewing a perfect Mental Stamina Potion . Hermione continued to hiss her disapproval, and glare pointedly at him and Ron.</p>
<p>“Look, you need N.E.W.T. level potions to be Aurors. You want us to sell whoopy cushions on  commission for Fred and George, instead?” Ron said.</p>
<p>“It would be honest work, at least. Maybe someone who’s actually got the qualifications to be Aurors are better cut out for it! How are a pair of cheating sneaks going to uphold magical law?” Hermione said huffily.</p>
<p>Ron made a shocked sort of ‘Tcha!’ noise, hugging his copy of ‘Magical Sports Illustrated’, whose cover announced a spot on McGuffie of the Cannons: “McGuffie Speaks! The Cannons Chaser Spills All About his Courageous Battle With Inflamed Sinuses”.</p>
<p>Harry looked plaintively into Hermione’s eyes, and said, in a barely audible whisper, “Look, can you just trust me? Dumbledore said Slughorn likes to collect promising students…I have to keep his eyes on me. All right?”</p>
<p>“Did Dumbledore tell you to cheat in class?” Hermione said skeptically.</p>
<p>“No!” Harry hissed exasperatedly. “But, Hermione, I need to get close to Slughorn, and being good at the subject he teaches seems a pretty good strategy.”</p>
<p>“Fine, but the last talking book we knew turned out to be You-Know-Who! Hmm, a Half-Blood wizard with aristocratic pretentions….sounds like Voldemort to me, or maybe someone who was in his inner circle during his school days,” Hermione said.</p>
<p>Harry sighed. He couldn’t deny that calling oneself a Prince and a Lord wasn’t too far off. What if it had been some sort of secret society, everyone had a code name, but only Lord Voldemort’s had become notorious, enshrined forever in infamy? Still, he had to try…finally, Dumbledore had entrusted him with the effort to take down Voldemort, and he couldn’t fail. </p>
<p>“Harry, m’boy! And Miss Granger! Come here-it shall be quick, come, come!” Slughorn called merrily.<br/>Harry and Hermione exchanged an awkward look-Slughorn hadn’t called Ron over. </p>
<p>“Well, I’m going to pop into the common room, see if any of the runts are messing about with the television,” Ron said.</p>
<p>“I’ll be along,” Hermione said apologetically.</p>
<p>Slughorn eyed her, and Harry, with the satisfaction of a collector as they approached him.</p>
<p>“Miss Granger! Mr. Potter! I’d be delighted to see you both at a little something-or-other I’m having for the Equinox,” Slughorn said.</p>
<p>“That’s September 22, the day that the sun crosses the celestial equator, and day and night are equal in length,” Hermione explained.</p>
<p>“I know!” Harry said, with a strained, incredulous tone.</p>
<p>Slughorn chuckled. “Ah, young love!” he crooned fondly.</p>
<p>“We’re just friends!” Harry and Hermione said in unison, and stood a little farther apart. </p>
<p>“Ah…is that right?” he said skeptically. “Well, all the same, here are your invitations. It should be a pleasant way to spend the occasion! I look forward to it! Oh, and Mr. Potter, excellent Mental Stamina potion! Your poor, dear mother must be at your side, guiding  your hand!”</p>
<p>Harry felt jarred by that, but pressed on, feigned a proud smile, and said, “Thank you, Professor, I do like to think so, thanks very much.”</p>
<p>They accepted their invitations, and left Slughorn’s classroom.</p>
<p>“I think I’ll invite Dean!” Hermione said brightly. “He’s taking the search for an apprenticeship seriously, and Slughorn is so well-connected. Have you signed the roster for Dueling Club yet?”</p>
<p>“I dunno…if Snape is supervising, who’s to say he won’t turn up and murder me during a demonstration?” Harry quipped darkly.</p>
<p>“Harry! Whatever his faults, you must remember: Snape saved your life in first year,” Hermione said.</p>
<p>“So I should prostrate before him in gratitude?” Harry said snarkily.<br/>“So you should ask yourself why. A man who hated your father and godfather, a former Death Eater…why did he save you from Quirrel at every turn? If it doesn’t make any obvious sense, which it doesn’t, then there must be something beneath the surface,” Hermione said calmly.</p>
<p>Harry’s temper cooled. Hermione had a point. “I know why Dumbledore thinks so, anyway,” Harry said, almost under his breath. Hermione looked into his eyes with intense anticipation, and Harry continued, “Dumbledore thinks that Snape regrets telling Voldemort about the prophecy, and leading him to my parents. Yeah, right! Hermione, he hated my father. Why would he regret his death?”</p>
<p>“What about your mother?” Hermione said.</p>
<p>Harry blinked. “What do you mean?” </p>
<p>“Well, what if she was the one whose death he regretted? Do you know anything about her time in school? Who were her friends? What was she like? What did she do for fun?” Hermione asked. “Slughorn is always talking about her. Seems like she was quite the Potions wiz…no pun intended. Since, you know, we all actually are. Wizards, I mean.” </p>
<p>“He called her a Mudblood-do you go around drinking butterbeer with Malfoy?” Harry said.<br/>“What about…before he called her that? When you told me about that memory in Snape’s Pensieve…” Hermione said.</p>
<p>“What?” Harry asked.</p>
<p>“Well, it occurred to me that you wouldn’t just go over to help someone like that, the way your mother did Snape, if you didn’t know them at all, or were somewhat friendly…” Hermione said.</p>
<p>Harry hadn’t thought of that. He had been so disgusted with his father’s and Sirius’s behavior in Snape’s memory, and had thought of his mother as a Good Samaritan simply happening upon the scene, and doing the right thing. Could Snape have been an acquaintance of his mother’s, someone to her as Neville was to Hermione, Lily sympathetic to the bullying he routinely faced? They were, after all, in the same year…</p>
<p>“No way. Do you think Snape would be friendly with a Gryffindor? One who beat him in Potions?” Harry said. “A Muggleborn, Gryffindor, who beat him in Potions?”</p>
<p>“Snape hates Potions,” Hermione said emphatically, and added, “Teaching it, anyway.”</p>
<p>“He taught it for 15 years, didn’t he?” Harry said.<br/>“And he loathed every minute of it. You can always tell when a teacher hates their subject. He applied for the Defense position every single year since he started teaching here. You can imagine it was always the subject he most relished as a boy. Would he have given a toss about Lily’s marks in Potions if he was really set on Defense Against the Dark Arts?” Hermione said.</p>
<p>“What does it matter?” Harry snapped. The last person he wanted to talk about was the man who was uncannily placed in the middle of Sirius’s and his parents’ deaths.</p>
<p>“Fine. Sorry. I didn’t mean any disrespect to your mother’s memory,” Hermione said, as they climbed the stairs to the portrait hole, and continued, “its just odd, that Dumbledore would insist that regret is what’s keeping Snape loyal, when it isn’t very likely that he would regret your father’s death so deeply” and added, “Cockahoop.”</p>
<p>“What was that last bit?” Harry asked.</p>
<p>“The password,” The Fat Lady said, and her portrait swung open to admit them in.</p>
<p>Harry didn’t think it was very likely that Snape and his mother knew each other very well. All she’d said to his father was, “Leave him alone.” Not, “Leave him alone, he’s my friend!”, or “Severus, are you all right?” Clearly her prerogative had been to stop James, not necessarily to comfort Snape, or aid him for his own sake. Her actions had seemed principled but dispassionate; she would have taken up for anyone in that predicament, not just an especial friend. Yet…how could he say for sure. What did he know about Lily Potter, really? He hadn’t even known until Slughorn that her favorite subject had been Potions. He’d assumed it had been Charms…that was what Ollivander had said that her wand was good for…</p>
<p>Harry appreciated fully that his parents had once gone to this  school. They had been in Gryffindor House, climbed through the portrait hole to the same common room as he, sat in the armchairs in front of the fire. Perhaps Lily had sat in the window seat as Ginny was currently, reading absorbedly as the sunshine glinting off the lake shone on her red hair…</p>
<p>Ginny looked up, saw Harry, hugged her book and slipped out of the window seat, and took the stairs to the girls’ dormitory.</p>
<p>Ron was sitting in his favorite chair, Lavender on his lap. He looked from Harry to the empty window seat Ginny had just vacated, and said, “Is she doing that again? Scurrying off every time you enter a room? I thought she was over that?”</p>
<p>“Have some decorum, you two!” Hermione said. Lavender took on a very smug, ‘cat who’s gotten into the cream’ expression and settled her bottom all the more comfortably on Ron’s lap.</p>
<p>Harry sighed, and switched on the TV. </p>
<p>“Training purposes,” he told Hermione, and settled in to watch a Falmouth v. Wigtown match, trying not to think of Ginny saying, ‘I don’t want to need anything from you’, her hair, skin, and eyes painted with orange light. Why had he been so stupid, and confessed that he dreamed of her?</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Dumbledore counsels Harry; Ron puts his foot down with Cormac, and Lavender seeks reassurance; Dean gets Harry thinking; Ginny has a bit of fun, then receives misleading information; Harry saves face with a lie</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"Tiffany" resurfaces; who made up a fake boyfriend of girlfriend to spare their feelings when they were teenagers?  It was pretty common when I was a kid-is that just an American thing? Lol. Anyway, its fun writing Harry and Ginny as clueless kids with all the raw emotion and raw insecurities of that. One day, they'll be that lovely married couple of 'Cursed Child', but, as for now....:)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry hadn’t seen such a well played match since the 1994 World Cup. Falmouth won, on the strength not only of their Seeker’s, Dauntsey’s, catch of the Snitch, but their lead in points thanks to the Chasers. Harry closely watched their scoring pattern, trying to detect the method of their play. One Chaser in particular, Thora Redwine, employed  the Porskoff Ploy, in which a Chaser being pursued by the other team flies upwards, then throws the ball down to another of their own Chasers, in a reverse pass to her fellow Falcon Nectan Trevanion that took nerve and was pulled off with a certain cheeky flair. Harry had laughed out loud at her expression as she tossed the ball over her shoulder, a wicked relish and mischievous glint in her eye.<br/>
“Nice arse on that one,” McClaggen commented about Redwine, and stretched out with the regal and smug air of a lion king on the comfiest couch.<br/>
Harry frowned at him.<br/>
“What? I like a chick that knows what to do with a shaft, that’s all,” McClaggen drawled.<br/>
“That’s disgusting!” Lavender shrieked.<br/>
“Cool it, McClaggen,” Ron said.<br/>
“Shaft-that’s the long part of a broom, Weasley-look it up,” McClaggen said.<br/>
“Having a go at a Prefect? That’s nice,” Ron said drily. “Five points from Gryffindor.”<br/>
“For what?” McClaggen sputtered, outraged.<br/>
“You’re watching the telly without permission. You’re not on the team, are you?” Ron said.<br/>
“What? That’s bollocks!” Cormac fumed.<br/>
“Harry’s on the team, so am I: that’s training purposes, in’it? You, on the other hand, don’t need to do much training on the reserve list,” Ron said.<br/>
Harry laughed, until Cormac pointed at Lavender, and said, “What about that slag?”<br/>
“Oy!” Lavender squealed in her own defense, and leapt to her feet. Ron, his face the  color of a sweet red wine, looked at McClaggen with hard eyes, and said,<br/>
“10 points, and I’m reporting that one to McGonagall. Go to bed, McClaggen!”<br/>
Cormac smirked as if he couldn’t be bothered, held up his hands in a facetious gesture of protest, and went upstairs.<br/>
“He’s a creep,” Harry said, not caring to wait until McClaggen was out of earshot.<br/>
“Ron-you don’t think I’m a slag, do you?” Lavender said, genuinely vulnerable, her pale blue eyes trained plaintively on Ron. “I mean…you like me, don’t you?”<br/>
“Yeah, ‘course,” Ron said.<br/>
“I mean…do you think I’m smart?” Lavender said, with a sort of desperate hope that could only safely be answered in the affirmative. Ron frowned as if he just couldn’t see what being smart had to do with being girlfriend material, but said,<br/>
“You’re…really good at Divination,” diplomatically.<br/>
Lavender smiled with wild satisfaction, and said, “Remember when Hermione flunked Divination and stormed out in a strop?”<br/>
“She didn’t flunk, she withdrew,” Harry said, earning himself a glare from Lavender, and a wide-eyed warning from Ron as if to say, ‘Don’t mess this up for me, man.’<br/>
Harry looked at the time. He’d soon have to report to Dumbledore’s office, anyway. He didn’t have time to ponder the nuances of Ron and Lavender’s relationship.<br/>
“Gotta go. Dumbledore,” Harry said.<br/>
Ron nodded. Lavender’s eyebrows were raised in interest, but by sending messages by various people to Harry, Dumbledore clearly wasn’t making a secret of their meetings, so he didn’t feel any need to do so. He also trusted Ron not to give Lavender any details-he wasn’t that far gone. As Harry left the common room,  Dean was headed up the stairs, to the Fat Lady’s portrait,  carrying a stack of books.<br/>
“D’you need help with those?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Nah, I’m good, thanks. Hermione said just use her library card, and I could check out as many as I wanted. She wasn’t kidding!” Dean said.<br/>
“Yeah-let me guess, she gave you a list?” Harry said.<br/>
“She really knows her stuff,” Dean said.<br/>
“What d’you reckon your first lesson will be?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Dunno. I’m going to go over a few of these books myself, get with Hermione, then I reckon Snape will want a say,” Dean said.<br/>
“I can’t believe he’s actually going for this,” Harry said.<br/>
“Reckon he thinks it’ll make him look good-shaping young minds, or something. Sorta like Slughorn,” Dean said. “is it just me, or does ol’ Slug seem a little cool on Snape?”<br/>
Harry shrugged. “How’s he supposed to seem?”<br/>
“Think about it. He loves bragging about how he taught Elvis to play the guitar and introduced Lennon and McCartney to each other, or whatever,” Dean said, making Harry laugh, and continued, “if you were Slughorn, and you’d taught the youngest Potions Master and Head of House in living memory at Hogwarts all that he knows, wouldn’t you be telling anyone who’d listen?”<br/>
Harry thought about this. That would certainly make sense…unless, it had been Lily who was Slughorn’s star student in her year, and he had never warmed up to Snape. He never wasted an opportunity to sing Lily’s praises, nearly 20 years after her death, he had clearly never forgotten her. Might he have hoped that she would be his successor? That would also explain Snape’s hostile reaction to her intervention when Sirius and James tormented him: of all people to pity and try to help him, the “Mudblood” Gryffindor girl who outshone him to his own Head of House. It would be like Hermione giving Draco her sympathies over his father’s imprisonment: Harry could only imagine Malfoy’s venomous response to the kind gesture of someone he looked down on.  Hermione was wrong about Snape: if there were two people whose deaths he would not have regretted much at all, it was certainly both James and Lily Potter.<br/>
“Slughorn likes bright young things. Not exactly the life of the party, Snape, is he?” Harry said.<br/>
Dean laughed and said, “Definitely not! I’ll let you know when we’ve decided our first meeting. See you, Harry!”</p><p>Harry continued down the corridor to Dumbledore’s office, and when he reached the imposing marble gargoyle, he said the password, “Sugar Quills,” and the statue moved to grant him access to the door. Harry knocked upon it, and none other than Snape answered. Harry took a step back in surprise at the sight of the long, sallow face, and cold dark eyes, curtained by perpetually lank and wet looking dark hair.<br/>
How dare he! How dare he be so calm, cool, collected, stoic, and emotionless, when he had spent all of the previous year tormenting Sirius, driving home that he was useless to the Order of the Phoenix, stuck in hiding?<br/>
“Potter, you do plan on entering the Headmaster’s office, don’t you? Then you will have to move,” Snape said firmly.<br/>
Make me move, Harry wanted to say childishly, and see outrage and a flushed, red color rise in that pale, cold face. The man who had belittled Sirius, and set Voldemort on parents…he wanted to make him feel, for once. He wanted, in truth, to see him pay.<br/>
Harry steadied his breathing, and stepped aside, to let Snape pass in his flowing dark robes like a trail of black smoke as they slithered in his wake upon the floor. He could still feel his heart hammering as he entered the office. Dumbledore looked, as ever, serene and amiable.<br/>
“Lemondrop, Harry?” he offered, holding out a bowl.<br/>
“I don’t want candy!” Harry said, sharper than he intended. He then looked sheepishly at Dumbledore. The headmaster’s serene blue eyes seemed to be waiting for an explanation, so as he sat down, Harry said,<br/>
“How can you stand it, sir? Knowing what Snape did, and keeping him here, trusting him with important information, letting him around kids…” Harry said, shaking his head.<br/>
“Severus poses no danger to the students of Hogwarts, Harry,” Dumbledore said. “His standards are known to be exacting, yes, and he does not, like some of his predecessors, befriend his students…but, he would not harm a student in his charge. I would not allow an individual I thought capable of such an act on staff at Hogwarts, nor was Dolores Umbridge here of my choice, or desire, Harry.”<br/>
“I’m not talking about her,” Harry said.<br/>
“Harry, we mustn’t conflate those we dislike and distrust with those who have done us the greatest harm. After what you suffered last year, at Umbridge’s hands, anyone would feel distrustful of others. But, humanity is not made up of the sum of its worst examples. When you lose hope in others, Harry, your heart dies,” Dumbledore said.<br/>
“No danger of that, Sir. I never trusted Snape to begin with,” Harry said.<br/>
Dumbledore nodded, as if this was a matter of course. “And, as you know, I do. I hope this is not an impasse we cannot overcome,” he said graciously.<br/>
Harry feared the possibility of dismissal, in that otherwise diplomatic statement. Would Dumbledore wash his hands of Harry, if he couldn’t accept Snape’s place in the war effort? Harry needed to be involved. Having so many secrets kept from him, and being ignored by Dumbledore, had tormented him.<br/>
“No, its not,” Harry said. “I just wish I understood. He was a Death Eater. He gave the prophecy to Voldemort. You say he regrets it, but why should he? My dad bullied him, and my mum was Muggleborn; I saw Snape call her a Mudblood, in the Pensieve,” Harry said.<br/>
A curious look was cradled like light in the depths of Dumbledore’s intensely blue eyes. For a minute, Harry thought he was going to explain something to him, or deliver another life-affirming platitude.<br/>
“Harry, is tonight perhaps not the night? Professor McGonagall informs me the Quidditch team has an unexpected vacancy, no doubt that came as an unpleasant surprise to you,” Dumbledore said.<br/>
Harry was shocked, and galled. Dumbledore thought he was a stupid kid, who couldn’t pay attention because of a vacancy on a Quidditch team.<br/>
“No! I want to know how to defeat him,” Harry said.<br/>
“Very well, then,” Dumbledore said, with a firm edge to his characteristically gentle voice, and Harry got the message: Snape wasn’t important, Harry needed to buckle down.  Harry sighed, and settled into his chair as the translucent waters of Dumbledore’s Pensieve began to swirl with memories.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny didn’t spend much time in her room. She slept there, naturally, but she couldn’t call herself close with her three roommates. They had seen her act strangely in first year: sleepwalking, talking in her sleep, returning covered in blood and feathers. She couldn’t quite blame them for not being able to get over it. She lay on her bed, reading ‘Practical Charms and Their Applications, vol. 4’ by Ianthe Hardwicke, but she could tell that the girls around her felt stilted in her presence, unable to freely resume their heated discussions of hair and skincare Charms, boys, Witch Weekly celebrity gossip, and which girls at Hogwarts could safely be called ‘cows’ and why.<br/>
“Yeah, some Muggle, I heard. Cho Chang tried getting back with him, and Ron Weasley said it. Right. To. Her. Face,” Bettina Henstock said. She was lying on the floor on her belly, swinging her legs back and forth in her flannel pyjamas with a delicate floral pattern of ivy vines and small flowers.<br/>
Ginny’s ears perked up.<br/>
Jemima Beanacre, who was brushing her enviable chestnut brown hair, her skin covered in a lavender cream mask, said, “Its no wonder. That’s what happens, when you live near Muggles-that’s all that’s around, and that’s who you go for. A waste, though.”<br/>
“They talk about their feelings, and such, that’s what it is. A boy like Harry, he needs someone simpatico. He’s probably told her all about You-Know-Who and growing up without his parents, and Muggles, you know, they know how to handle those things,” Ina Waynflete said sagely, with a hint of wistful envy, as if she was the one who’d love to have Harry crying on her shoulder about the tragedies in his life.<br/>
“Yes, Weasley? Do you want to say something, or are you trying to turn me to stone?” Jemima said sarcastically. Even with the ridiculous mask on, as if someone had hit her in the face with a cream pie, she had a regal bearing and superior attitude.<br/>
“Are you talking about Harry Potter?” Ginny asked, unphased.<br/>
“He’s got a Muggle girlfriend. Ask your brother, he knows all about it,” Ina said. “I mean, of course he does, they’re best friends.”<br/>
“Oh, Ginevra wouldn’t know anything about that. Having friends, I mean,” Jemima said. “Maybe you should get a pet, Ginevra. Try not to kill it with your bare hands.”<br/>
“Or train it to attack!” Bettina added, shrieking her laughter.<br/>
“If I do either, aren’t you worried you cows would be at the top of my list?” Ginny asked coolly.<br/>
Ina frowned in disgust, and said, “You’re lucky we let you sleep here! Freak!”<br/>
Ginny had one trump card, and she didn’t use it very often. Her memories of just how she had behaved when she was possessed was shaky-sometimes, impressions of things buried came to her, but she would perhaps never have the whole picture. But, she could guess, and knew what would fix her roommates. Ginny began to hiss, in an imitation of Parseltongue, and watched the faces of the girls turn to quiet horror, too alarmed to scream.<br/>
“Stop it! Stop that, now!” Jemima demanded.<br/>
“She’s calling it! She’s calling her basilisk! Why did you make her angry?!” Ina demanded of Jemima.<br/>
“Me?!” Jemima shrieked, in outrage.<br/>
“Ginevra, we’re sorry!” Bettina said hurriedly.<br/>
“Good. So, I can continue to sleep here?” Ginny said.<br/>
All three girls nodded.<br/>
“Cool. I’m going to go watch Quidditch. The team’s allowed, you know: training purposes,” Ginny said.<br/>
She went downstairs, and blessedly found Harry gone. She had taken one look at him when he walked in the common room earlier and was forcefully hit with the memory of his body pressed against her’s, and his lips inexpertly but ardently marauding her’s, the feel of  his thin back beneath her hands, and his smell of fresh sweat, grass and plain white soap flooding her with its clean, simple scent. She’d fled, just the way she had when she was 11, and he actually showed up at her house after weeks of pestering Ron to tell her what he was really like to be friends with.<br/>
“Gin,” Ron said, and he had a strange look on his face.<br/>
Strange for Ron, anyway. Ron always looked like he was waiting for something to happen, though he half dreaded that anything would. Maybe being the subject of some of Fred’s and George’s tricks growing up had left him the nervous sort. Ginny had liked to watch them Charm Ron’s secondhand GI Joes to fight noisy military campaigns, his teddy bears to have wrestling matches, or his Play-Doh to stick his hands together, but she supposed it wasn’t so funny from Ron’s end, when he just wanted to play in peace.<br/>
Now, however, he looked concerned for her, as if he had been waiting to talk to her, which was weird. He hadn’t even looked like that after the Chamber of Secrets. She suspected her parents had instructed everyone to act as if it hadn’t happened at all, to help her get over it. The trip to Egypt had helped, absorbing everyone’s attention and focusing it on something positive. If there was anything Ginny wanted to say about Tom, the diary, and almost dying in the Chamber, she had forgotten what it was; there was no one to talk to about it, and there never had been.<br/>
“Gin, I saw you run out of the room when Harry walked in. Are you…into him again?” Ron said.<br/>
“Ron, I think I know what you’re going to say,” she said.<br/>
“He’s got a girlfriend,” Ron said.<br/>
Ginny nodded. “My roommates have one brain between them, but they’re usually right about that sort of thing.”<br/>
“She’s a Muggle, called Tiffany,” Ron said.<br/>
“Are you sure?” Ginny said.<br/>
“Yeah. He actually talked about her. And the way he talked about her…he’s really into her,” Ron said.<br/>
“Well, good for him. But, I’m not into Harry. And this is weird,” Ginny said.<br/>
“I just didn’t want you to do something dumb, like send him a rhyming Valentine,” Ron said.<br/>
“I was 11!” Ginny said.<br/>
“Yeah, well, like I said, I don’t want you thinking….just don’t, all right? He’s got a girlfriend,” Ron said.<br/>
“I heard you!” Ginny snapped. “Does he write to her? I mean, how would he send it? By Hedwig? Does she know all about Hogwarts, and the Wizarding World?”<br/>
“I dunno. I reckon she must-where does she think he’s off to half the year?” Ron said.<br/>
Ginny rolled her eyes. She sensed that Ron was out of concrete information, and moving on to the realm of embellishment.<br/>
She clicked on the television and discovered that she had missed the whole Falmouth/Wigtown match, and there was nothing on but a variety show. The Hobgoblins had reunited, and were playing their new single. She remembered that wild story in the Quibbler last year, and supposed the lead singer really did look a bit like Sirius. </p><p> </p><p>When Harry returned from Dumbledore’s office, he found Ginny curled up into a corner of the couch Ron had forced McClaggen to vacate, asleep with a Charms textbook on her lap and an empty mug on the small table beside the couch. The television was still on, playing a Wizarding Wrestling Federation match. From what Harry could tell, one of the combatants was half troll, the other surely had some ogre blood.<br/>
‘Figures’, he thought. Wizards would never knock each other about for a crowd’s amusement if they could get Creatures to do it. Hermione was right, reform was needed…and thoughts of S.P.E.W strayed to thoughts of Sirius. Would he truly still be alive if he had been kinder to Kreacher? How could he have done? Kreacher really was full of venom, and insulted all of them, especially Sirius, in his nasty, pointed mutters. Did it matter, who had taught him to be that way, if the end result was that he was about as loveable as a blast-ended skrewt in a bonnet? And what if Kreacher had been sent to the Hogwarts kitchens a year earlier?<br/>
‘No, then Sirius would have been all alone,’ Harry told himself. But, he had been fine with just Buckbeak for company on the run outside of Britain, and in the cave outside Hogsmeade…wasn’t it better to be all alone, than alone with someone who hated you?<br/>
Why hadn’t Dumbledore just told him to pose as Mrs. Figgs’ s dog, Snuffles? Harry smiled at the idea of the little old Squib trying to walk the shaggy, demonic looking black dog that Sirius became...and at Sirius’s reaction to the suburbs. Then the idea made him sad, sad for all that had been and all that couldn’t be. Harry missed writing to his godfather, being able to appeal to him for advice, and hearing about his travels in careful hints. He never told Harry in exact words where he was, but Harry could guess by the postcards or trinkets the letters contained.<br/>
Ginny jerked awake, and when her eyes were open, they were a darker brown than usual, as if absorbing the red hue of the tapestries on the walls at which Mafalda had marveled.<br/>
Her golden-brown eyes fell on Harry. He thought of the first time that he had watched the light play in Ginny’s eyes, by the fire at Grimmauld Place. And he thought of her saying that she didn’t want anything from him, didn’t want to need him. It hit him, only now, just how harsh it was. He was so used to being able to depend on the Weasleys’ generosity and loyalty, but clearly to Ginny, it didn’t go so far as wanting him to kiss her, as Dean and, surely, Michael had. Harry knew that he wasn’t like those other boys…but, Ginny thought so, too.<br/>
“Harry,” she said.<br/>
“Hey,” he said, and sat on the couch beside her. “So, d’you reckon that bloke’s half-troll?”<br/>
“Which one?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“The big one, in the black shorts,” Harry asked.<br/>
“Hmm…well, if he is, he’d never say. That’s the sort of thing people keep their mouths shut about, sadly,” Ginny said.<br/>
“That’d be tough, lying about who you are,” Harry said.<br/>
They were both distracted by the fight, as one player clothes-lined another, who hit the mat with a hard thwack. Ginny scrunched up her upturned nose in sympathy and alarm.<br/>
“Ouch!” she said, and Harry laughed in agreement.<br/>
“Poor bloke,” he agreed.<br/>
“So…how did you tell Tiffany that you’re a wizard?” Ginny asked.<br/>
Harry frowned. “What?” he asked.<br/>
“You said it would be tough, lying about who you are…so, how’d you tell her?” Ginny asked.<br/>
Harry had forgotten all about that ridiculous cover story he had come up with, so Ron wouldn’t know he had been dreaming about Ginny. He must have told Ginny! So much for his faith in Ron’s discretion. How could he clear this up without sounding both pathetic, and perverted?<br/>
He wasn’t angry at Ginny for rejecting him. As often as he found his name in the news, he doubted it would be as the cover star of Witch Weekly for best smile any time soon. He knew there were taller, more handsome, blokes, who knew how to make conversation with girls and had normal lives, at Hogwarts, and girls generally went for them, not him. But, he didn’t want her thinking some version of, ‘Poor Harry-I’d never date him, and no one else wants him, either,’ so he found himself saying,<br/>
“Erm, you know…I just…told her. And, she was fine about it.”<br/>
Ginny looked at him with a slightly skeptical frown, then her features smoothed out, she nodded, and seemed to accept his answer. The cheers and thwacks of the wrestling match on the television continued, and Ginny asked,<br/>
“What’s she like?”<br/>
Harry knew he couldn’t very well say, ‘red hair, with freckles’, so Harry began to think on his feet.  The story grew as he talked. Tiffany had shiny dark hair (like Cho), she was clever and read a lot (like Hermione), she went to Stonewall High (where he had almost gone to school, if not for Hagrid’s intervention), she was good at figure skating (the first sport, for some odd reason, he could think of besides Quidditch), and because she needed some sort of flaw, he threw in that she was a bit too keen on dieting (which, if Aunt Petunia’s magazines were anything to go by, was something Muggle women thought a lot about), but, so that Ginny would not think that Tiffany was shallow, he added that she cared very much about animals, and was a vegetarian (again, cribbing off Aunt Petunia’s magazines; this seemed to be what thin and beautiful young Hollywood stars said about themselves when they wanted to be More Than A Pretty Face. Los Angeles, he was sure, was likely the vegetarian capital of the world).<br/>
“Oh…then she must love it, Hedwig delivering your letters to her. A snowy owl, showing up at your window-bet she loves it every time. You do write to her, don’t you?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“Sure. I mean, not yet, term’s only begun, not much has happened,” he said. “But, generally, yeah.”<br/>
“Why didn’t you bring her round, this summer?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“Her parents are…strict. She’s the only child,” he said, again, thinking of Hermione.<br/>
Ginny nodded. “Well, that makes sense.”<br/>
As if to make the case for Tiffany’s parents’ strictness even more convincing, he added, “You see, she had a brother, who died…so, that’s why they’re kind of hard on her, you know? To make sure nothing else bad happens.”<br/>
Ginny’s eyes were so appealingly warm. She looked so openly empathetic, Harry felt like an A1 putz for making up a dead kid. It wasn’t as if he had done it on purpose, to get Ginny to feel for him. It wasn’t his brother, it was Tiffany’s. He didn’t know why he was doing all this, it was like something was forcing the story to keep going, forcing the words out of him.<br/>
“How sad! But, then, she must have been lovely, when…Sirius died. Known just how to handle it. You talked all about it, didn’t you?” Ginny said.<br/>
Harry was angry at himself. This Tiffany business had gone on long enough. Of course, he didn’t want Ginny knowing he’d dreamed about her, and he’d told too elaborate a story to stop now…but, what was he supposed to say to that? There had been no sympathetic, gorgeous girlfriend with a family tragedy of her own waiting for him in Surrey, making it all better. There had been only the blessed silence and darkness of his bedroom, as he slept for hours, not eating, not bathing, waking only briefly, with the suspicion that he had cried or had a nightmare, wiping his teary face and sliding back into sleep again, immediately, or taking the time to eat one of the surplus Cauldron Cakes he had bought on the train expressly for the purpose of not having to risk a row with Vernon over raiding the Dursley’s fridge.<br/>
If there had been a Tiffany…she would have looked at him the way Ginny did, now. As if she felt his pain completely, as if it was her own, but she could hold it. She could hold up the other edge of it with him, and together they could carry it.<br/>
“She was lovely,” Harry said.<br/>
“I wondered, you know, how you were getting on, so well. Now I know,” Ginny said. “Well, cheers to Tiffany!”<br/>
“Yeah. Cheers,” Harry said.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Harry starts to suspect Snape and Malfoy of wrongdoing, misses Ginny, and loses his temper with Hermione; Ginny avoids Harry, but doesn't enjoy it very much</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks to everyone who's been reading the story, and I hope you enjoy this chapter!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry was lying to her, but Ginny didn’t quite know why. There was no Tiffany, that she was certain of. Harry had been thinking on his feet, his long black lashes batting nervously over his lustrous emerald eyes with every new attribute he described of Tiffany: her love for animals, talent at figure skating, and strict parents who contradictorily didn’t mind an owl delivering mail to their house. Even if she sounded like a real person, which she didn’t, Ginny had some pretty reliable evidence against her existence: she had never once seen Hedwig deliver a letter to or from her. Harry’s only correspondent had been Sirius, and since his death, she no longer swooped into the Great Hall to deliver a letter to Harry from him. </p><p>So, Ginny pondered throughout the next day, why did he lie? Did he want to make it clear that their kiss in the commentary box was a one-off by making up a fake girlfriend as a buffer between them? As if Ginny was a desperate animal in heat that would claw and paw at him again, the next chance she got! Hmph! Well, then! She made sure to keep a distance between them for the rest of the week-skipping the try-outs for a new Chaser, which yielded a find in fourth year Demelza Robbins; eschewing her usual seat on the other side of Hermione at meals, landing instead at the end of the table by Eloise Midgen. Poor Eloise didn’t deserve her status as a Gryffindor house pariah-severe acne should not yield the same social shunning as attacking the whole school with Slytherin’s basilisk. </p><p>“I say, doesn’t Harry Potter come round your house for the summer hols? Does he ever bring that Muggle girl round? I heard he’s dating a Muggle girl, who’s training for the Winter Olympics! Figure skating, you know,” Eloise said authoritatively.<br/>
Ginny wanted to tear her napkin in half. She had sat with Eloise to escape Harry, thank you very much, not gossip about him!<br/>
“Oh, is that right? Well, then she’d better watch out for Tonya Harding,” Ginny said, and mimed a crowbar swing. </p><p>When she looked at Eloise, she wasn’t laughing, but looking at Ginny with a stern gaze.<br/>
Ginny settled down. Maybe it wasn’t just the acne-Eloise had no sense of humor.<br/>
“She’s banned for life from competitive figure skating,” Eloise said, as if everyone should know.<br/>
‘It was a joke!!!!’ Ginny wanted to scream. </p><p>Why were all the girls she knew either humorless prigs, or gossipy flibberdygibbets? Of course, Hermione was neither of those things, but she was Harry’s best friend and Ginny didn’t know what to make of him, at the moment. While Eloise educated her about the key events before and during the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics, Ginny glanced over at the Ravenclaw table. Luna was wearing her funny two-toned glasses that looked like 3-d movie theater glasses, and reading a book called ‘Water Fauna of the United Kingdom’, and Cho was talking animatedly to Nancarrow and Lingonberry, who laughed. It was funny: Gryffindors had a reputation for rowdiness and good times, while Ravenclaws were considered serious. But, Ginny looked around and the only people she could have had a good time with in her House were Ron and his friends, who she was avoiding. </p><p> </p><p>“I think Ginny’s taking it hard, finding out about Tiffany,” Ron said.<br/>
“Who’s Tiffany?” Hermione asked.<br/>
“Harry’s girlfriend. She’s a Muggle,” Ron said.<br/>
Lavender and Parvati’s ears pricked up. “Harry? Seriously? You’re dating a Muggle? A real one?” Lavender said.<br/>
“No, he’s dating a mannequin,” Hermione muttered contradictorily. Lavender caught her remark, and glowered.<br/>
“What’s she like?” Parvati asked. “Does she, like, go to malls, and wear Topshop and H&amp;M? Does she like ‘Boy Meets World’, or ‘Saved by the Bell’, better? Oasis, or Blur? Does she know how to rollerblade?”<br/>
Harry felt as if he had been hit over the head. Lavender’s and Parvati’s gazes were trained on his, waiting for his answers to these burning questions, and even Dean, Neville, and Seamus looked interested. Why wouldn’t this Tiffany thing just die? Hermione, meanwhile, was giving him her most sour gaze, reserved for all matters relating to the Half-Blood Prince, and Ron’s most oblivious comments-she clearly didn’t believe in Tiffany’s existence, not one whit. Harry felt like the firmly tied laces of his school shoes were the only thing keeping his soul from leaping out of his body.</p><p>He tried his best to answer each question, and the legend of Tiffany grew: she volunteered with Meals on Wheels and the Samaritans hotline, she sat beside him in primary school and they first spoke when he loaned her a pencil, her mother was American, she had a cat named Snowball, then he remembered that Lisa Simpson had a cat named Snowball, but it was too late, it was out of his mouth, hopefully no one recognized that; her favorite book was ‘Julie of the Wolves’, she wore Calvin Klein perfume…or was it Calvin Klein jeans….aside from Harry’s inventions, he found himself agreeing to Lavender’s and Parvati’s direct questions of, ‘Does she…?’ this-and-that, as if that was what they expected to hear of a Muggle girl, and would take no other answer.</p><p>All the while, Hermione kept boring into him with that look. Harry focused his attention elsewhere, once the Tiffany interrogation was over, and noticed that Dumbledore was, once again, not seated at the faculty table on the dais. He must have left Hogwarts mere hours after their lesson, Harry deduced. He also hunted the Gryffindor table for Ginny, and found her listening intently to Eloise Midgen, who seemed to be talking about figure skating; Harry hoped it had nothing to do with Tiffany. </p><p> </p><p>He had walked away from their conversation in the common room convinced that Ginny believed him, at least. He’d felt ever since the D.A. that they were becoming friends…Ginny’s friendship was different than Ron’s and Hermione’s. She gave sound advice, but without Hermione’s uncompromising bossiness, and supportive without Ron’s sometimes insecure and competitive streak. She seemed to know when he was lost and subtly step in and guide him, and to be able to jolt him out of a bad temper and then move on. He had become accustomed to the presence of her, and the new feeling of support she brought to his life. Maybe if she thought he had a girlfriend at home, they could just return to being friends. If Harry dreamed about her again, he knew how to keep it to himself.</p><p>“Where do you think Dumbledore goes, when he’s not at the castle?” Harry asked Ron and Hermione, as they and all the other students spilled out into the corridors as breakfast adjourned.<br/>
“I’m sure it has something to do with the effort against Voldemort, and to require his personal attention, it must be very sensitive,” Hermione said sensibly.<br/>
“I dunno, but did you see Snape looking at Dumbledore’s chair like its got his name on it? He wants to be headmaster, anyone can see it on his face,” Ron said.<br/>
“He’s far too young! Hardly anyone trusts a wizard under 100 years old with a role of that level of responsibility,” Hermione said authoritatively.<br/>
“They’re ambitious, Slytherins. Common sense has never stopped them,” Ron said. </p><p>Hermione shook her head, but the idea stuck with Harry. Whatever Dumbledore believed, Harry didn’t think Snape was legitimately on the side of the Order of the Phoenix. Which meant, that as a double agent between the Order and the Death Eaters, he was uniquely placed to feed false information. What if Snape was leading Dumbledore on a wild goose chase, with false tidbits about Voldemort, his plans, and whereabouts.<br/>
“Harry! Don’t you start embroidering Ron’s paranoia into some kind of theory. I know how you two are. If either of you continue down this track, you’ll be following Snape around in Harry’s invisibility cloak, or slipping Veritaserum into his morning tea to get him to confess his undying loyalty to Voldemort, before long,” Hermione said wearily.<br/>
“Now, there’s an idea,” Harry said drily.<br/>
“If I thought you could brew Veritaserum, I’d be concerned,” Hermione shot back.<br/>
“The Prince probably can,” Ron said, with a conspiratorial wink at Harry.<br/>
“I’ve heard quite enough about this so-called Prince. I can’t make you give that book up, but you know very well how I feel,” Hermione said.<br/>
“Take it easy, Hermione. I told you, I have to keep my grades up to get close to Slughorn,” Harry said.<br/>
“Using dark magic to get what you want, is that it?” Hermione said.<br/>
“No! Look, you scanned the book for any dangerous charms, and even Ginny was convinced that it wasn’t like Riddle’s diary,” Harry said.<br/>
“Ginny is barely 15 years old; one unfortunate experience with a dark object hardly makes her an expert in dark magic. Why don’t you run it by Dumbledore, during your next lesson? Or McGonagall, or Slughorn? Or, we could write to Bill, he’s a Curse Breaker. And Remus, he’s actually an expert in Defense Against the-” Hermione rattled on, and Harry felt overwhelmed by her voluminous discourse, and rankled by the mention of Lupin, who had not reached out to him at all since Sirius’s death.<br/>
“When are you going to learn,” Harry snapped, “that running off and tattling to an adult isn’t the answer to everything?! Teachers aren’t the answer to everything! They lie, and they hurt people, just like anyone else! They aren’t bloody saints!”<br/>
He was clenching his fist, so that the words ‘I Must Not Tell Lies’ shone white with the strain of the taut, scarred skin on the back of his hand.  Harry had the respite of a blink, and when that nanosecond of blessed dark was over, he saw what he knew he would see: Hermione looking alarmed, taken aback, and hurt, and Ron looking paralyzed into awkward silence by surprise at Harry’s outburst. Harry opened his mouth to apologize, but Hermione was already peeling away, murmuring about going to the library, in a shaky voice Harry knew came from the effort not to cry till she was alone. He hated that he was the reason. 

“Erm, I gotta go patrol. Looks like I’m on my own-hope the runts aren’t hyper, today,” Ron said, aiming for a jocular tone that sounded false and strained.<br/>
Harry started to make a lame joke about how Prefects were lucky they got to arrive at class a bit late, but Ron hardly heard him for rushing away with a strained smile and hasty wave, as if Harry were a madman that needed to be appeased but was dangerous to spend too much time around. Ginny, Hermione, and Ron were all avoiding him, and he knew that he only had himself to blame. The worst part was, he knew that even when  things settled down between him and his friends, he didn't know how to tell them how he felt. 

</p><p>How could he explain, how much it hurt that Lupin had said the words, “I’ll keep in touch” and not done so? So unlike Sirius, who had kept every promise to Harry he had ever made, even if that hadn’t been perfect in execution. He did keep in touch, even if that meant risking being caught and thrown back into Azkaban; he had let Harry live with him, even if his house rivalled that of the Addams family in creepy ambience. Sirius had never kept him waiting, broken a promise, or lied…and he was gone now. How could Harry explain to Hermione, that something in Harry had fallen irretrievably behind that Veil with Sirius, the ability to trust that there was someone older, stronger, wiser, and more knowledgeable than him, whom he could trust, who would explain everything and swoop in when Harry needed them.

</p><p> </p><p>Harry arrived at Potions, and to his dismay the first words out of Slughorn’s mouth were, “Books closed, everyone!”<br/>
He stood in front of a large, pot-bellied cauldron that was emitting silky smoke, whose aroma Harry found undeniably scrumptious. When it hit him, he drank the smell down in an elongated breath, trying to get his fill and then some of the smell of apples, the grass of a sun-warmed meadow, honeysuckle, and wild roadside roses. He batted away the memory of the words ‘wildflower honey’ formed on Ginny’s perfectly pink, delicate lips in his dream…but the taste of apples still bloomed on his tongue, anyway.<br/>
“Those of you who’ve made it N.E.W.T level potions no doubt have interest in a career that is going to involve knowledge of complex, sometimes forbidden, potions. Perhaps you’d like to be Healers, Apothecaries, Alchemists, or,” with a wink at Harry, “Aurors. In either of those cases, you’re going to interact every day with the laws of our land regarding what substances should be handled with care…and things you should never get your hot, happy little hands on in the first place!”<br/>
The class laughed at the last bit, even Hermione. She and Ron came in a bit later, and Ron wordlessly slipped into the empty space beside Harry, while Hermione joined Dean. Harry looked over at her, and she gave him a soft, affectionate, but apologetic look. That made Harry squirm with guilt, inside: he didn’t want her thinking it was her fault for setting him off. He shouldn’t have been so sensitive, or blown up at her, in the first place.<br/>
“Now, can anyone tell me what they smell, coming from this cauldron? Miss Granger?” Slughorn said, before Hermione had even raised her hand.<br/>
“I smell… all of my favorite things! Freshly mown grass…parchment…maple syrup…” She said, sniffing enthusiastically.<br/>
Slughorn chuckled. “And what class of potion is capable of appealing to us like that, Miss Granger?” he prodded.<br/>
“A love potion! And by the pearlescent color and counter-clockwise swirl of this potion, if I had to guess, I’d say it was Amortentia, the strongest love potion in the world!” Hermione said.<br/>
“Very good! You answered my next question before I had even asked it!  20 points to Gryffindor, young lady!” Slughorn asked.<br/>
The Gryffindor side of the class clapped for Hermione’s triumph-20 points was quite prodigious for a correct answer in class. Harry clapped hard, wanting her to know that he was happy for her, and he was sorry.<br/>
The moment was broken by Malfoy, who tried to slip into the back of the Slytherin section, but the creaking door betrayed him. He was late even for a Prefect, who had to supervise the traffic in the corridors before class began.<br/>
“Ah, Mr. Malfoy. You decided to join us, at last. Seeing a man about a dog, were you?” Slughorn said, earning more laughter from the class, even the Slytherin students.<br/>
Malfoy was used to making someone else, usually Ron, Neville, or Harry, the butt of jokes. Finding himself cast in this role, the laughter directed at him and ringing around him, produced a veritable cabaret revue of expressions on his face: stunned surprise, petrified awkwardness, and then deep, profound anger.<br/>
Slughorn chuckled at Malfoy’s expression, waved his hand, and said, “Oh, just having a bit of fun with you. Take your seat, no harm done, that’s all right.”<br/>
He wasn’t even important enough to Slughorn to tell off or discipline, Harry thought, shocked. This was a far cry from his familiar and close relationship with Snape. Draco took his seat, scowling.<br/>
“Now, ‘love potion’ is a bit of a misnomer-no potion can produce true love, but a correctly brewed love potion can create a powerful, albeit temporary, infatuation, even slavish devotion,” Slughorn said. “Why would this be a forbidden potion? Miss Bancroft?”<br/>
A Slytherin girl called Ciara Bancroft said, “Because its dishonest? Getting someone to love you with a potion?”<br/>
“You’re driving at it, yes; finish it off, Mr. Thomas?” Slughorn said.<br/>
“Its like a roofie, in’it? The date rape drug? People could do all manner of things to you, when you’re under the influence, so its almost like the paraphernalia of a type of assault,” Dean said.<br/>
“Exactly the point, dear boy! This is not an honest weapon at all. The cases are myriad of love potions being administered to witches and wizards who wake up months later, with no memory of their time in captivity, and captivity it most certainly is, your will manipulated utterly by one keeping you mentally and physically in their thrall,” Slughorn said.<br/>
“Smells nice, though,” Ron quipped, and the class laughed once more.<br/>
“Naturally, Willoughby,” Slughorn said. “you could say that a love potion is a set of velvet manacles: one is enslaved by the elements of all they could love, if given a choice. Now, of course, they are one of the most well-known class of potions, even Muggles are familiar with the concept. Turn to page 478, for a little historical background on that…”<br/>
When Potions was over for the day, Slughorn left them with a scandalous account of the life of Anne Boleyn, a Renaissance era witch who love-potioned first the Duke of Northumberland and then Henry the Eighth and became Queen of England (a Slytherin, of course), and an  assigned essay on two notable pieces of magical law that prohibited the brewing and distribution of love potions. As class let out, Draco was the first to dart out of the door.<br/>
“He looks a little unwell, doesn’t he?” Harry asked. “As if he hasn’t slept a night all term. And where’s the fire? He darted out before the bell had properly rung.”<br/>
“Yes, maybe he’s the Heir of Slytherin,” Hermione said drily.<br/>
“Hey! We had a convincing case!” Ron said.<br/>
Harry and Hermione shared a look. He knew that she wasn’t angry, and she knew that he didn’t have it in him to put his feelings into words. Silently, things settled back to normal, without words.<br/>
“He does look worn down…but, I suppose if my father was in Azkaban, I’d be rather anxious, myself,” Hermione said.<br/>
“I’m sure that’s all,” Ron said.<br/>
“But, what about Borgin and Burkes, this summer? What if he’s not sleeping because he’s up to something?” Harry said.<br/>
Hermione and Ron exchanged a look. Hermione seemed to have not only forgiven Harry’s outburst, but to be feeling charitable since he hadn’t required the Half-Blood Prince’s help in class that day.<br/>
“Harry, I’m not saying that Draco hasn’t been behaving strangely, but we haven’t any way to find out why. You try asking him!” Hermione said.<br/>
“Mafalda Prewett said that Snape was telling him off one day, and kept saying, ‘Let me help you’,” Harry said. “Whatever it is, they’re in on it! Snape and Malfoy are putting some kind of operation in order, for Voldemort, right here at Hogwarts.”<br/>
“My cousin, Mafalda? When’d you talk to her?” Ron asked.<br/>
“Gin brought her round Gryffindor Tower. I asked Gin to ask Mafalda if Malfoy had been acting strangely,” Harry asked.<br/>
“I think you’ve leapt to quite a lot of conclusions. We have no proof of any of your assertions: that Draco is a Death Eater, that Snape is still loyal to Voldemort, and that the two of them are planning something nefarious,” Hermione said.<br/>
Harry couldn’t argue with that: he needed proof.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The outcome of the Hufflepuff and Slytherin match throws Gryffindor a curveball; Ginny is bullied by her roommates</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>We must examine the 'Ginny is a popular girl' narrative a bit: this is from Harry's perspective, and he notoriously doesn't pick up on subtext and misconstrues what he sees and hears. In 'Cursed Child', Draco and Ginny connect over having both envied the Trio's closeness, not having had close friendships like that, themselves; Ginny also recounts in the play how the other kids shunned her after the Chamber of Secrets, which is why Harry playing Exploding Snap with her meant so much.<br/>We see her connect with Ravenclaws like Luna and Michael and his friends, and with fellow Gryffindors a year ahead of her like Hermione, Neville, and Dean, but I don't think her 'street cred' with Gryffindors in her year ever really recovered from the Chamber of Secrets, and she remained a bit of a target for bullies: why else would she need to be so good with hexes? I also think that's why the Quidditch Team and the D.A. mean so much to her: she finally got to be included in a group.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Who are you looking for, mate? Tiffany?” Ron joked, as Harry bobbed his head to and fro, looking at the Slytherin students crossing the lawn towards the Quidditch pitch.<br/>
“Malfoy,” Harry answered humorlessly.<br/>
“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said breezily. “Can’t you just enjoy the day? There’s a match, there’ll be a Hogsmeade afternoon after, and then tomorrow there’s Slughorn’s party! I say, as this will be the last of the fine weather until April at least, not a bad way to spend it, on all fronts!”<br/>
She was chipper because her birthday had passed just a few days prior, making Hermione the first of their set to turn 17, the age of majority for wizards. Her gifts from her parents had been Royal Ballet tickets for a Christmas production of “Swan Lake”, and a homemade perfume from Mrs. Weasley.<br/>
Ginny, who had been devotedly taking meals with Eloise Midgen on the other end of the Gryffindor table, leaned in as Hermione opened the old-fashioned glass bottle with rose shaped stopper on the morning of her birthday, and said,<br/>
“Mmm, honeysuckle and wild roses-she makes me the same one, every summer since I turned 14; says a woman should have a ‘signature scent’,” Ginny said.<br/>
It was the very smell that had risen from Slughorn’s cauldron of Amortentia, Harry realized. It was a bit odd that Hermione wore it now, too. They’d spent nearly every moment of the school year and some holidays together since they were 11, and while he recognized that she was an attractive young woman, there was something too familiar about her to consider feeling romantically about. Also, if he was being honest, Hermione treated him like a little brother, who would wander off and never do a jot of homework if she weren’t ordering him about. He didn’t fight her back, the way Ron did, he let her direct him, but it had been the order of things for so long, and Harry didn’t know where he would be without Hermione’s stage management of their lives. 

It didn’t exactly inspire hot fantasies, though-if they dated, would Hermione instruct him how to kiss her?<br/>
Harry, Hermione, and Ron walked across the lawn in a crush of students heading towards the stands to watch the Hufflepuff v. Slytherin game. As Gryffindor captain, Harry was curious to see how Primula Hooks would perform as the new Slytherin Seeker. He’d seen her from afar, and she was small for her age, which he’d been when he became Gryffindor Seeker at 11. It was an asset for a Seeker to be small and fast. However, even Quidditch strategy couldn’t totally distract him from the riddle of Malfoy…or looking for Ginny in the crowd. He felt a bit distressed at the idea that maybe she would skip the match, altogether. Maybe Eloise had cornered her with her collection of Olympic figure skating memorabilia, and Ginny was nodding politely at a succession of Wheaties boxes, at that very moment.<br/>
“Oy, Gin!” Ron said, waving. Harry gulped. Hermione looked at him with the same ‘Give me a break’ expression as when he cheered the Chudley Cannons to appease Ron.<br/>
Ginny was not walking with Eloise Midgen, but Luna Lovegood, who was wearing her usual dreamy expression, as if she truly could see all manner of mystical creatures no one else could. But, Harry would  never forget that it was Luna, eccentric and distracted as she was, and Neville, who was only just beginning to attain a confident grasp of magic, as well as Ron, Hermione, and Ginny who had answered his call to go to London and rescue Sirius. Ginny, who’d gotten right into his face and chewed him out, fighting for the right to accompany him, winning him over when she said that she cared about Sirius just as much as he. That had clinched it, Harry realized: he had been aware that Mrs. Weasley and Sirius didn’t get on, and it had worried him…and maybe, embarrassed him, the way that the two halves of what family he had didn’t mesh. To know that Ginny could see what Harry saw in Sirius, beneath the sarcasm, sullenness, and drinking, there was someone worth saving, had given her a new radiance and maturity in his eyes. She became someone to trust.<br/>
The silver lake glittered behind Ginny, and in the corner of her shoulder, behind her vibrant orange hair, was the piping smoke from Hagrid’s chimney, and the giant pumpkins of his garden. She was surrounded by the colors and smells of autumn, and they suited her perfectly.<br/>
“Hi, everyone,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Where’s Eloise?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Oh, she’s not into Quidditch, and all the cheering gives her a headache,” Ginny said. “she studies during matches.”<br/>
“I find it rather energizing,” Luna said, in that musical, floaty voice of hers’. “But, it’s a bit of a blood sport, Quidditch, isn’t it? People knocking each other about in the face with big balls, and all.”<br/>
Ron’s mouth twisted into a sort of jack-o-lantern face with the effort of not bursting into laughter at this reference to big balls. Hermione seemed to be holding his face in place with the force of her glare.<br/>
“And its quite exploitative to smaller people, isn’t it?” Luna continued. “The role of Seeker, is usually held by a smaller person”. Looking at Harry with her innocent, direct gaze, she said, “The most likely to be killed or maimed, Seekers. The ethics of it do trouble me. Do they, you?”<br/>
“Erm…not before, but it seems a bit personal, now,” Harry said.<br/>
“Harry’s a lot taller than he used to be, though. He’s almost too big to be any good as a Seeker,” Ron said.<br/>
“Oh, that’s much better, then,” Luna said, with a satisfied smile.<br/>
“Too big?” Harry said.<br/>
Harry was genuinely rankled…Ron was the one who practically needed a song from “Barney and Friends”  sung to him for encouragement before every match, and had only made the team when half its best players were banned by Umbridge, he thought, and then felt like a rat-bastard. Still, he hadn’t expected a dig like that from Ron.<br/>
“Well, yeah, you’re a bit above standard height, now, mate. I mean, look at Greenhalgh,” Ron said.<br/>
“Greenhalgh?!” Harry sputtered, at the name of the comically ineffective Chudley Cannon’s Seeker. “That wanker? He caught a butterfly, thought it was the Snitch, ripped his shirt off and started doing a, frankly lewd, victory dance!”<br/>
“Yeah, he’s a card. And he’s standard height,” Ron said. “but, you didn’t want to play pro anyway, right?”<br/>
“He could, if he wanted!” Ginny said heatedly. “they make allowances for really good players, all the time! Look at Griselda Heap, her shoulders are a bit smallish for the Harpies’ usually standards for a Beater, but she’s much stronger than she looks.”<br/>
“Oh, yes, she is,” Harry agreed readily-Heap was a compact, sturdy little blonde from the Orkneys, who wore her hair in a French braid, and routinely flanked the Seeker,  a slender blue-eyed witch Granya Fishwick, whose hair danced behind her in a silky black banner in a most Cho-esque way, keeping the Bludgers off her back. ‘Fishwick and Heap’, who were emerging as quite the duo,  had a pull-out poster in Ron’s latest issue of ‘Wizarding Sports Illustrated’, both young witches in their gold and green Harpies uniforms, holding their Zephyr brand brooms, and gazing with smoldering fierceness at the camera…Ron showed no interest in it, so Harry had  slipped it between the pages of Advanced Potionmaking.<br/>
Harry was keenly aware that this was the first time he and Ginny had talked with casual ease and lightheartedness in some time, between their heated kiss and his tapdancing lies about Tiffany. The moment was broken by Ron scoffing,<br/>
“Who cares about the Harpies? They’re a joke.”<br/>
Hermione looked stunned, and neither she nor Harry was surprised to see the air around Ginny seem to become hot and charged, her long hair quaked by a personal wind of her anger, and her eyes narrowed and darkened.<br/>
“Is that right?” she said, like a threat.<br/>
“How long’s it been since they’ve taken a Cup?” Ron said.<br/>
“Not sure, off the top of my head, but I’m sure it isn’t 104 years,” Ginny said coolly, and Hermione laughed, too.<br/>
“Oh, she means the Chudley Cannons! They haven’t won a cup in over a century. Some say they’re cursed, but if that was the case, I think they could have had it removed, by now. It must be an internal issue,” Luna said.<br/>
Ron blanched. Even the girl notable for her persistent belief in the otherwise unconfirmed Crumple Horned Snorcack didn’t believe that malevolent magic had anything to do with the Cannons run of bad luck.<br/>
“Our whole family supports the Cannons, you only like the Harpies because you always have to be different!” Ron said.<br/>
“If being different means people don’t think I’m a nutter, then fine, yeah, sure,” Ginny said.<br/>
“You have to be a nutter to like the Cannons? Then I guess on top of everything else, our whole family are nutters!” Ron said.<br/>
“Merlin’s knob! You know that liking the Cannons has nothing to do with family honor!” Ginny said.<br/>
“Well, I rather like Puddlemere United. I mean, Wood plays for them, and we know him, so…I thought it was rather amusing how he used to work out Quidditch plays with his salt and pepper shaker and the napkins at breakfast,” Hermione interjected, just to divert Ron and Ginny. Harry quickly followed her example and brought out some of his wildest anecdotes from practices with Wood. Ginny, Hermione, Ron ,and even Luna, who retained her tendency to laugh a bit too long and too loud, laughed the rest of the way to the stands overlooking the pitch.<br/>
“D’you reckon Hooks is any good? A bit young, isn’t she?” Harry asked.<br/>
Ginny shrugged with one shoulder, while with the other hand she adjusted her binoculars. “Same age as me when I started playing for Gryffindor last year,” she pointed out, and added, “Shh, the match is starting, look, there’s Madam Hooch.”<br/>
Indeed, the steel-gray haired head of the sport department was striding onto the field, and blew her whistle.<br/>
The respectively arrayed Slytherin and Hufflepuff teams ascended the air.<br/>
The key strengths of the Hufflepuff team , besides their keeper, Cockburn, were their Beaters, Trickle and Ruffle. The Slytherin strategy as long as Harry had been playing Hogwarts Quidditch had been to stack the team with brawny players, but their collective girth was actually rather a disadvantage against the sturdy but swift Oakstaff brand brooms flown by the entire Hufflepuff team, and their emphasis on precision. Crabbe and Goyle aimed Bludgers at the Hufflepuff Chasers and Seeker, but Ruffle and Trickle expertly aimed them right back, the two sides passing and returning fire like demonic tennis players for a bit. One could hear the cracking of wood, and Harry feared the Beaters’ bats would shatter.<br/>
Then, there were the Seekers, both girls. Imogen Appletree was a Seventh Year, and Primula Hooks was conspicuously smaller. She was a small, elfish, dark-haired girl, and Harry could see right away that there hadn’t been a Slytherin robe in her size, and the slightly over-large cloak was weighing her down. Appletree and Hooks dueled impressively, both sighting the Snitch at the same moment several times, until Hooks careened up sharply and quickly, outstripping Appletree, then diving sharply down, and then out. The Slytherin side erupted into applause at Hooks’s catch.<br/>
“I do hate it when good things happen for those slimy gits,” Ron said matter of factly. “Throws my whole day off.”<br/>
“Merlin was a Slytherin, you know. His strength was Charms; he was called the Prince of Enchanters,” Luna said.<br/>
“Luna!” Hermione said, astounded. “that’s actually true!”<br/>
“Why, yes, I know that,” Luna said, a bit confused, while Hermione continued to stare at her, marveling that Luna had uttered a verifiable fact.<br/>
“Prince?” Harry said, the phrase catching his attention.<br/>
“I doubt your textbook was owned by  Merlin, Harry,” Hermione said.<br/>
Harry rolled his eyes. That hadn’t been what he meant at all. But…could the book have belonged to a Slytherin? Merlin was the singularly most famous and lauded personage in Wizarding history. If Gryffindors admired the dashing Godric Gryffindor, their house’s founder, whose name only echoed in the wider world in the name of one small West Country village, how much more Slytherins must be proud of Merlin, whose name was known by all who knew the legends of Camelot. They had perhaps chosen the appellation Prince in echo of Merlin’s moniker…<br/>
“What’s going on down there?” Ginny asked Ron.<br/>
“I think…but I’m not sure, yet…” he said, scanning the pitch with his binoculars. After a few moments’ deliberation, Ron made a fist and triumphantly struck the air, crying, “Yes!”<br/>
“What is it?” Hermione asked.<br/>
“Hooks caught the Snitch out of bounds, so the catch doesn’t count. It’s a hanging match!” Ron said.<br/>
“A hanging match?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Yeah. The Snitch has been caught, so the match is over, but the catch was illegal, so it ends in a draw,” Ron said.<br/>
Harry had never experienced such a phenomenon, and asked, “So, what happens next?”<br/>
“We’ll play them both, Hufflepuff and Slytherin, and how they do against us will determine a retroactive score in this match. It’s a silly rule, I know, something to do with maths and finding  a median number from both scores,” Ginny said.<br/>
“So…we’ve got two matches, one weekend after the other?” Harry said.<br/>
He was trying to take it stoically, but he was gobsmacked. Ron’s inconsistency, Peakes’s and Cootes’s disobedience, Ginny’s arguments with Peakes and the tension between herself and Harry, Katie’s need for direction Harry didn’t have the experience to provide, and the fact that Demelza was so new and untried…Harry looked at Ginny, and he knew she understood the weight he felt at the prospect of preparing his team for their upcoming, unexpected challenges.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny had read about notable hanging matches, but it was rather exciting to see one happen, and to know that her team had just gotten an extra match because of one. She felt renewed hope that they could regain their footing, and do themselves credit. Katie and Demelza caught up with her, Ron, Harry, Hermione, and Luna to discuss the turn of events on the way back to the castle. Hermione spotted Dean, and said she would see them all at the Three Broomsticks.<br/>
“Since when are they tight?” Ron said, with a scowl.<br/>
Ginny felt a lump in her own throat, too, but managed to answer. “Its just for Dueling Club. Are you lot going?”<br/>
“Sure! It’ll be just like the D.A., won’t it? I have missed that,” Katie said.<br/>
Ginny noted that Harry seemed a bit awkward, when she said it, but to tell the truth, it hadn’t occurred to Ginny, either, that the D.A. would not continue. She missed learning such out of bounds magic, and the excited, conspiratorial, cooperative attitude of all of the students involved; she felt as if they were their own adjunct Order of the Phoenix, a Hogwarts branch…but when their first mission came, they failed. Ginny had pieced together from things she overheard at Grimmauld Place that Harry, Ron, and Hermione had saved Sirius, who was innocent, from being wrongfully kissed by Dementors…but, instead of saving him from Voldemort as the D.A. intended, their presence at the Ministry had led to his death. Perhaps that was why Harry had no interest in the D.A. anymore-they had let him down, the whole thing had failed.<br/>
He didn’t rage or confide in her, the way he had the year before. Harry kept everything inside, behind lies and a stoic false cheerfulness. The only time she had seen him truly feel was when they kissed….<br/>
But, she shook off those thoughts. He didn’t want it to happen again, obviously, and if the dissolution of the D.A. was any proof, when Harry was done with something there was no resurrection.<br/>
The students spilled back into the castle, and took the grand staircase to their respective house dormitories; Ginny climbed the stairs to the girls’ dorm, and with reluctance went back to her room. She knew Ina, Bettina, and Jemima were probably up there charming each others’ hair blonde, but she would just ignore them, as always. She had written her mum for some casual day clothes for Hogsmeade, and they came in the morning mail. Ginny relished getting out of her school uniform and robes, and changing into the jeans and sweater from home.<br/>
When she got in the room, Ina, Bettina, and Jemima’s eyes all darted to her, and away; with a shared murmuring giggle, they went back to their magazine.<br/>
“Weasley-would you shag Stubby Boardman, from the Hobgoblins?” Bettina asked.<br/>
The air felt like a storm was rising. It was never a good sign when they put on those shiny-happy voices, and made out that they were trying to include and speak normally to her. She had fallen for that shite in the beginning, and it usually meant that they were going to twist her words as if whatever she’d said had been ridiculous.<br/>
“Not for love or money; he’s old enough to be your father,” Ginny said coldly, and began undressing.<br/>
“Can you give us some bloody warning, Weasley? Or are you an exhibitionist?” Jemima said, as Ginny took off her blouse.<br/>
“I can think of a few other words for what she is,” Ina giggled, and all three girls laughed.<br/>
Ginny ignored them; all she did in this room was dress and sleep, and she refused to budge on those two activities. She put on her sweater, and jeans, and then got a funny feeling that she had forgotten something. Her dress, for the Slug Club parties…it wasn’t with the other clothes her mother had sent. Of course, it was a 1970s bell sleeved, floor-length horror with a paisley print and panels of velvet and lace, but unlike Ron she tried to avoid making their mum feel bad about the fact that most of their clothes were secondhand or handmade. But, as horrible as it was, where was her dress&gt;<br/>
Ginny felt like she was inside the funnel of a tornado, wind rushing around her in a wall of sound, as her three roommates giggled as they watched Ginny realize what had happened. The maroon velvet curtains had been replaced by her mangled dress.<br/>
She burned cold with rage, inside and on the surface of her skin. It was a laugh to them, because they didn’t have to watch the way even the charity shopkeeper sniffed the air distastefully and spoke with chilly politeness, shooting hints that she was about to close the shop for lunch so they had to hurry to make their selections and then leave while her mother bought them new clothes…but, clothes Muggles didn’t want was cheaper than going about in Wizard robes all the time.<br/>
Ina imitated the way Ginny’s chest rose and fell with labor, and the slight puff to her cheeks in her reddened face, exaggerating them for Jemima’s hilarity, while Bettina said dismissively,<br/>
“You didn’t actually want to wear that thing, did you?”<br/>
“Its either that or go starkers!!” Ina laughed.<br/>
“Why don’t you just wear your brother’s trousers, like last year?!” Ina cackled.<br/>
The girls laughter ceased when Ginny pointed her wand at the girls’ most prized possession in the room: the mirror.<br/>
“Reducto!” she cried, and the glass shattered like abandoned diamonds, sliding to the floor with a tinkling sound. The girls got up from the floor, squealing with fright.<br/>
“There’s glass everywhere!” Ina said, sounding to the point of sobbing.<br/>
“You’ve gone too far, freak!” Jemima barked.<br/>
Ginny continued to hold her wand high, and said, “Shut up! And keep away from me!”<br/>
“What are you going to do?” Jemima said, retrieving her own wand from her bedside chest of drawers, and holding it on Ginny.<br/>
Ginny had never seen such fire in her eyes. Beanacre was a snob and a bully, but not a dunce-she did well in Charms, but Ginny was betting that she hadn’t learned much from Umbridge’s Defense curriculum, not the things Harry had taught in the D.A. Ginny felt electrified, like she wanted to laugh, cry, and run a mile like when they jogged around the pitch in practice. No consequence that followed hexing Jemima Beanacre into shards like the broken glass mattered-she’d leave Hogwarts, and land on her feet the way her brothers had; she’d go to Azkaban, and escape like Sirius had. She was beyond fear.<br/>
“What in Merlin’s name is going on, here?” Hermione demanded, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips, her stance grounded, and her chest pushed forward, in front of Ina, who was sobbing and taking shelter behind her. No one had noticed her peel out of the room full of broken glass to fetch the female Prefect.<br/>
“Weasley’s gone mad! Oh, wait, she already was!” Jemima said nastily.<br/>
Hermione looked from Jemima to Ginny, and then at the floor.<br/>
“Who broke this mirror?” she asked.<br/>
“Weasley!” Bettina said promptly.<br/>
“And, why ever did you do that, Ginny?” Hermione asked.<br/>
“Bound to happen sometime, with those ogresses staring in it all the time,” Ginny said.<br/>
Bettina widened her eyes pointedly, appealing to Hermione to see Ginny as they did: unhinged, dark, strange, dangerous.<br/>
“I see the curtains have been replaced,” Hermione said, folding her arms.<br/>
“That’s my dress! Mum sent it from home, and they cut it up, and hung it up at the windows while I was at the match!” Ginny roared.<br/>
“Why would I touch anything of yours’ Weasley? I’d never get the smell off!” Jemima shouted.<br/>
“That’s quite enough, both of you! Look, when I walked in, I saw two girls with their wands out, and don’t try to convince me that you were going to braid each other’s hair,” Hermione said. “the mirror didn’t break itself, and Ginny’s dress didn’t climb the window itself. Clearly, you’ve both played nasty tricks on each other.” She pulled out her elaborately festooned wand, waved it over the mirror, and said, “Reparo!” The glass disappeared from the floor, and the mirror’s pane of glass was restored. She did the same to the ‘curtains’, and the room was flooded with autumnal sunshine as Ginny’s dress fell to the floor, restored. She rushed to pick it up.<br/>
“Now, the lot of you, follow me to McGonagall’s office. Clearly, we have a lot to discuss,” Hermione said, and marched them out of their room.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Lavender causes a scene at the Three Broomsticks; Harry, Dean, and Hermione plan for the Dueling Club; Mafalda offers her help</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Happy Halloween! Enjoy the occasion with some seasonal fun, but stay safe from the COVID-19 virus, as well. Some CDC recommendations on how to celebrate safely can be found <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/holidays/halloween.html">Here</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Harry, Dumbledore asked me to give this to you,” Neville said cheerfully, when Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Dean arrived at the Three Broomsticks, and held out an envelope with Dumbledore’s handwriting on it.<br/>
“Thanks, Neville,” Harry said, and accepted the envelope. Neville went on his way, to a table in the corner of the Three Broomsticks.<br/>
“Poor bloke, sitting alone,” Ron sighed, looking at Neville over his shoulder.<br/>
Hermione cleared her throat, and she, Dean, Harry, and Ron watched Neville pull out a chair for Mafalda Prewett. Dean raised his eyes in approving surprise. Ron looked gobsmacked, and Hermione looked triumphant.<br/>
“Neville…and my cousin! She’s a Slytherin! And in she’s in Seventh Year! He can’t handle her!” Ron said, and sipped his butterbeer pointedly.<br/>
“Still waters run deep,” Dean said, with a shrug. Madam Rosmerta came round, and took their orders, four butterbeers. As she departed, Ron lingeringly watched her swaying, full figure. Hermione rolled her eyes.<br/>
“Won-Won!” Lavender cried shrilly, appearing at his side.<br/>
Ron shivered, jolted out of his reverie. She noisily dragged a chair from another table, and wedged it between Ron’s and Hermione’s chairs. Hermione’s chair teetered, and she nearly fell over. She gripped the table to steady herself, and said,<br/>
“Pardon me!”<br/>
“So, Harry, I was thinking that at the first meeting, we should go over disarming. The Expelliarmus Charm?” Dean said.<br/>
“Disarming is the most effective, nonlethal way to diffuse an armed conflict,” Hermione said. “And, I do think its important to really focus on that: why its important to stop a conflict before it escalates.”<br/>
“Yeah, getting away from people who want to kill you is usually a good idea,” Harry said.</p><p>Dean and Ron laughed, and clinked their butterbeer mugs in a toast to that.</p><p>“Yes, but I feel it prudent that we begin by explaining that while using magic to protect yourself and defend your life is sometimes necessary, we’re not teaching people all this so that they can go out and pick fights for the sake of it. There will be students there who weren’t in the DA, who weren’t at Hogwarts during the Tournament or Umbridge, and might not understand what we’re up against,” Hermione said.<br/>
“Well, then they’d better start reading the papers,” Harry said grimly, and Ron nodded.<br/>
“I get what Hermione means-we might be the first people to really talk straight with them about why Defense Against the Dark Arts is important, now more than ever, and what its really about,” Dean said, and began making notes.<br/>
Hermione awarded him with an approving nod, and Ron scowled at Dean’s bowed head. Harry, wishing to distract Ron, said,<br/>
“Where’s Ginny? I lost track of her after the match.”<br/>
“Dunno,” Ron said distractedly, still aiming his gaze at Dean like acrimonious twin lasers.<br/>
“Oh, I’m afraid Ginny lost her Hogsmeade privileges for the day,” Hermione said, in her lofty Prefect voice, which irksomely reminded Harry of Percy Weasley.<br/>
Ron shook off his grudge stare at Dean, and Dean himself looked up from his notes and said,<br/>
“What?”<br/>
“What happened, Hermione?” Lavender said. That really annoyed Harry- she couldn’t care less about Ginny, she just wanted a bit of gossip to trot back to Parvati with.<br/>
“Well, it seems Ginny and her roommates haven’t been getting on; they had a row, and spells were thrown. McGonagall decided to separate them, and they lost their Hogsmeade afternoon,” Hermione said.<br/>
“That’s way too harsh! Why should  Gin be punished if girls are picking on her?!” Ron said heatedly.</p><p>Rosmerta came round with the butterbeers; Lavender gave Ron a warning glance, not to watch the landlady walk away again, and his neck tensed with the effort to stare straight ahead of him. Hermione, who seemed to be pointedly taking on an airy, nonplussed mien to ignore both Ron and Lavender, said calmly,<br/>
“Well, she might not have started the fire, but she managed to break a mirror with a Reductor Curse. So, some punishment was in order, I’m sure you’ll agree.”<br/>
“Did she take it all right?” Harry asked, as he opened his coin pouch and gave Rosmerta 4 galleons for the drinks. Lavender, he noted, was watching his hands.<br/>
“Butterbeer makes me hungry! Won-Won, I want one of those pumpkin spice tarts,” she whined at Ron.<br/>
Ron looked as put on the spot as if someone had asked him to duet with Celestina Warbeck.<br/>
“Erm….” He began, then cleared his throat and said, “Sure. Madam Rosmerta, can you add a tart to that?”<br/>
“Sure, m’love. That’s gonna be 1 galleon, 13 knuts,” Rosmerta said.<br/>
Harry reached once again into his pouch, a serviceable black velvet drawstring bag he’d thrown into an order at Scrivenshaft’s on impulse, but Lavender snapped, “No! Won-Won’s got it. Haven’t you, sweetheart?”<br/>
“Yeah,” Ron muttered, and took out his own pouch.</p><p> A few coins rattled with a sparse, tinny noise in a repurposed Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans pouch, and after dragging out the counting process with reluctance, Ron produced the amount for Lavender’s pie. She glowed with gratification, while Ron turned faintly green. Harry didn’t hear anything tinkling in the flattened pouch as Ron put it away.<br/>
Harry was galled on Ron’s behalf. Of course, what little spending money Ron’s family had to give him when he went away to school wouldn’t have stretched much farther, but a whole Galleon could have gone towards something much more practical than a pumpkin spice tart for Lavender: quills, parchment, Potions ingredients at the Apothecary’s shop. Hermione was not disguising her indignance, but Lavender was jubilantly ignoring it.<br/>
“Hermione, is Gin all right?” Dean asked, renewing Harry’s query and the original topic.<br/>
“Frankly, something had to give. She’s had such problems with bullying for years, now, but she’s been suffering in silence, out of pride, or trying to handle it on her own, with that dratted Bat Bogey Hex, or something else along those lines. Well, that’s no way to handle your problems!” Hermione said. “As I said, I want us to emphasize that at the Dueling Club: this isn’t for handling the petty every day annoyances, but situations of life and death! We’re not trying to mold a generation of brawlers, but wizards who can gauge when force is necessary, when it is not!”<br/>
“Lofty goals,” Ron quipped.<br/>
“Why shouldn’t our aims be lofty? This is Hogwarts: the best Wizarding School in the world!” Hermione said passionately.<br/>
“Cheers to that,” Dean said, and they clinked glasses. Harry, Ron, and Lavender added their glasses to the toast, but the look on Lavender’s face was hardly congratulatory towards Hermione.<br/>
“I didn’t know Ginny was having problems. Is it about the Department of Mysteries? I know Smith was bothering her about that,” Harry said.<br/>
Hermione looked surprised, and said, “Harry, you know what happened in her first year. Did you think people had forgotten? That’s why she’s always been so grateful to you, for treating her as if nothing had happened,” Hermione said.<br/>
“Yeah, mate-that’s really good of you,” Ron said.<br/>
Harry was stunned. “I never knew people blamed Ginny for that! Its not her fault! How does anyone know about that?” he said.<br/>
“Oh, great,” Lavender muttered.<br/>
“What was that?” Hermione said, primly.<br/>
“Nothing…I just didn’t think we’d be talking about depressing things at tea, that’s all,” Lavender said.<br/>
“My sister isn’t a depressing thing!” Ron said.<br/>
“Well, You Know Who is,” Lavender said.<br/>
“There’s a war on, you better get used to talking about Voldemort, no matter how depressing you think it is,” Harry snapped.<br/>
“Well, that wouldn’t be an issue if you would do your duty, already. Do you need N.E.W.Ts to kill Voldemort? You’re the Chosen One, why don’t you go out and get rid of him?” Lavender said.</p><p>Harry felt like minster bells were ringing in his ears, alone. He had never cared much for Lavender; she seemed impressionable and frivolous. What she just said, however, had crossed a line into blithe ignorance. Harry felt that he must say something, but hardly knew what, and silence itself seemed to come from his mouth as he opened it. Hermione knew no such compunctions, and stood at the table, saying loudly to Ron,<br/>
“Get her out of here! This minute, Ronald Bilius Weasley! Take her away!” </p><p>Ron looked greener than when he had emptied his money pouch, looked wildly between Hermione and Lavender , then put his hand on Lavender’s arm and said, “Let’s go.”<br/>
“Madam Puddifoot’s?” Lavender suggested. She didn’t seem like someone who’d just caused such a fracas-more like a cat who’d just been presented with cream. Hermione looked incredulous as they walked out, but when Ron and Lavender were safely away, Harry said,<br/>
“Well, at least one good thing came out of this.”<br/>
“And what’s that?” Hermione asked.<br/>
“He’s probably going to break up with her, after that,” Harry said.</p><p>Hermione offered only a ‘Hmph!’, and then she, Harry, and Dean resumed their plans for the Dueling Club curriculum. As they talked, Harry did feel that old muscle being worked from when he’d led the D.A., and was sorry when he reflected that it was Dean everyone would be looking to for leadership, now. But, he reminded himself, why shouldn’t it be Dean? He couldn’t let this ‘Chosen One’ stuff get to his head, and think that he needed to be out in front at all times. Harry’d had enough of being singled out because of the way Voldemort had marked him. Lavender was a duffer, and always had been, but to Harry she represented the masses of the student body, and the way they must be thinking at the sight of him, ‘What’s he doing here? Shouldn’t he be taking care of Voldemort?’ What did they think, that he had returned to Hogwarts to bask in his fame? Fame, for being orphaned twice now, at his parents’ death, and now Sirius’s.</p><p>“’Lo, Harry. Did you try the cinnamon butterbeer? You look like you did. It’s a bit too robust for me,” Neville said, Mafalda by his side.<br/>
“Erm? Oh, hi Neville,” Harry said. “Hi, Mafalda. No, Neville, its not the butterbeer.”<br/>
“Did you still want to know about Malfoy? I’ve got something new, for you,” Mafalda said. “shall we walk?”<br/>
“If Neville doesn’t mind,” Harry said.<br/>
Neville smiled confidently, and said, “Go ahead.”<br/>
Mafalda and Harry headed out of the Three Broomsticks. The windows, balconies, and steps of shops were decorated in autumnal festiveness in honor of the upcoming Equinox, the Harvest season, and, at the end of the next month, Hallowe’en, with marigolds, pansies, pumpkins and other gourds, some carved into Jack O’Lanterns. Harry and Mafalda walked until they reached the stone bridge over the Hogmire river.</p><p>“Draco Malfoy’s been going in and out of the Room of Direst Need,” Mafalda said.<br/>
Harry drew a blank, until Mafalda said, “You know, the room where you used to host those Defense lessons? He was crowing about how he caught you at it, last year.”<br/>
“The Room of Requirement! Is that what Slytherins call it, the Room of Direst Need?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Yes. We always thought it was our secret-if you kip in there, there’s tons of old junk and you just speak into the open air what it is you need, and the room produces it! Within reason. It doesn’t seem to do organic things, so if you’re looking for spare Potions ingredients, or your Herbology project has wilted in the night, it isn’t of much help, there. But, if you need scales, a cauldron, a broom, something like that,” Mafalda said.<br/>
“So, why didn’t Malfoy know about it?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Well, firstly, his parents spoil him. He always has what he needs for school, and if he didn’t, he’d just write home. Secondly, as I told you before, he’s not well liked in our House. Why would he be?” Mafalda said.<br/>
“Right. So, who told you this, anyway?” Harry said.<br/>
“Igraine Inkpen. I know Ginevra probably told you I was an incurable gossip, but Igraine is the worst in our House! Once she has a sent, she’s a veritable bloodhound,” Mafalda said. “After overhearing that row between Snape and Malfoy, I don’t think she’s letting off his trail.”<br/>
Harry laughed, and so did Mafalda. She wasn’t quite as pretty as Ginny, Harry thought, but when she laughed her merriment suffused through her features, and she lost some of her vulpine sharpness. Her red hair was appealingly wild.<br/>
“Whatever he’s been trying to sneak into Hogwarts, maybe he’s tinkering away at it in there,” Harry said.<br/>
“Well, then it sounds like we’d better have a poke, and see if anything looks suspect?” Mafalda said.<br/>
“We?” Harry said, stunned. </p><p>Was Mafalda offering to help him investigate Malfoy? Ron and Hermione had all but banned the subject of What Malfoy Was Up To, but Mafalda, a Slytherin, seemed to find credence in his suspicions, and was willing to help.<br/>
Could he trust her, though? She might have been related to the Weasleys, but she was a Slytherin. He thought of Hagrid’s words when he was just a boy, “There never was a wizard who went bad, who wasn’t in Slytherin.” She had never been round the Burrow for holidays, and had never offered Harry support when he was accused of being the Heir of Slytherin, during the Tournament, Umbridge, or the D.A. She kept insisting on her antipathy for Malfoy-could she be using Harry to twist a knife, and get Malfoy expelled for some reason of her own?<br/>
“Look, I can practically hear you thinking. You think I’m setting you up,” Mafalda said.<br/>
“The thought occurred. All I have to go on here is your word-that you hate Malfoy, that you, or your friend saw him going into the Room of Requirement,” Harry said.<br/>
“And why should you trust me any further?” Mafalda said.<br/>
“Well, why should I ?” Harry said.<br/>
“Because I think I’m rather uniquely positioned, wouldn’t you say?” Mafalda said. “Yes, I was sorted into Slytherin house, the House of Voldemort, and his Death Eaters. But, Death Eaters killed my father. They’re the reason I never knew him. The reason my mother is sad and anxious. People say he was funny, kind, a good friend, a brave fighter-what’s that mean to me? I don’t know what he would say if I ask him things. I can’t ask him anything, can I? I’ll never have…his voice. His ideas. His help. I don’t want Death Eaters in Hogwarts. If Malfoy is one, its not going to stop there. If he’s been made a Death Eater, Voldemort’s sent him to recruit others. Do you know what I think he’s doing in that room? He’s never had an original idea in his life-I think he’s going to train people up in Dark Magic, in there, the way you were training people in Defense against it. He got the idea from you.”<br/>
“And, in the meantime, where will people go for spare cauldrons?” Harry quipped drily.<br/>
Mafalda narrowed her sky blue eyes at him, and heatedly demanded, “Don’t you care? Did you hear what I just told you? Don’t you give a damn?! I thought you, of all people, would understand, would care!”</p><p>“Why? Because I’m the Chosen One? Because I should be roving the land with Excalibur in hand, hunting Voldemort down and dueling him in the middle of Trafalgar Square? Or, maybe London Bridge? Where should the epic showdown be held? What would make the best front headline of the Daily Prophet?” Harry raged bitterly.<br/>
Undeterred, Mafalda, looking like Boadicea surveying the arson of a Roman fort, said, “No! Because I thought…you must have things you want to ask your parents, too! Don’t you want to…make it all stop? So no one else has to wonder what their parents were like, or listen to other people tell stories about them, thinking that will make you feel better, but it really just makes you feel worse, because you can see in their eyes that they knew them, you’ll never get a chance to?”</p><p>Harry looked into Mafalda’s eyes. They weren’t blazing amber, but hot and penetrating blue, but he felt the way he did when Ginny was angry and raging at him, that some magnetism was holding them to regard each other, and he couldn’t look away. He realized he was breathing heavily, and he felt overwhelmed. Yes, he felt that way. He still wanted to write to Sirius, when he was confused about something, and felt frustrated and angry when he remembered that he couldn’t, he had no one to write to, to ask things…And for a long time, he even missed the Mirror of Erised, and watching his mother and father smile and wave to him.<br/>
He didn’t think even a Slytherin would lie about those things.</p><p>“Fine,” he said. “You can help me watch Malfoy.”<br/>
Mafalda wasn’t expecting him to change his mind so quickly, and frowned as if it was now she, who suspected him. Eventually, her face softened once more, and she said,<br/>
“Very good. Well, Igraine and I will keep an eye on him.”<br/>
“Doesn’t sound like much gets by her,” Harry said.<br/>
Mafalda smirked, and said, “You have no idea!”<br/>
They returned to the Three Broomsticks, Harry to Dean and Hermione, Mafalda to Neville.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ron surprises Harry with his perspective on Lavender; At Slughorns' party, Harry struggles to connect and Ginny acts impulsively</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I hope you had a great Halloween, everyone! On November 1, National Novel Writing Month begins! I will be developing a novel set in an original world with an original plot out of my Alternative Universe fic, "The Alchemist's Daughter", drawing on characters and concepts my sister and I started developing over a decade ago! Its been a long, hard road to get to this point! If you, too, are on a creative journey, don't give up: fight for your voice, and take joy in using it. You can check out "The Alchemist's Daughter" <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23194372/chapters/55523596url">Link here</a></p><p>The song Hermione requests is "Champagne Supernova" by Oasis. Listen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI-5uv4wryI">Link here</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>How many other students, Harry wondered, felt the way Lavender Brown did? That, as the Chosen One, he should have put childish cares and school days away, and set out on Voldemort’s trail? He’d noticed an uptick in whispers and stares as his sixth year began, as opposed to the pariah’s treatment of his fifth, but what if his fellow Hogwarts’s students were not just curious about what had happened at the Department of Mysteries, but wondering why he didn’t get a move on, and duel Voldemort to the death? Harry had to admit, that a confrontation not only felt inevitable, the prophecy that Sirius had been killed in the Death Eaters’ attempts to retrieve, as Dumbledore explained it, all but assured it. Voldemort believed it, and his belief governed his actions, which would lead him to try to kill Harry again, as he had tried when he was 1, when he was 14…he would take another shot.</p><p>No one around him could possibly understand that. Perhaps, not even Dumbledore. As Harry changed for Slughorn’s party, annoyed with any occasion that necessitated dress robes, he looked at the envelope bearing Dumbledore’s handwriting-when their lessons first began, he’d thought they’d be practicing Defensive magic, dueling…not Voldemort’s life. What secret could be hidden in memories of Voldemort, from people he had harmed and duped?</p><p>“You’re actually going to that party for Slughorn’s Merry Band of Brownnosers?” Ron asked.</p><p>Harry laughed. “Dumbledore’s orders,” he said, and shrugged. “Why don’t you come with me?”</p><p>Ron snorted. “And have to answer to ‘Willoughby’ all night? No thanks,” he said.</p><p>“The food’s going to be great, if nothing else. And, you know, you might meet someone a damn sight cleverer and more fun to be around than Lavender,” Harry said, with a jocular laugh. </p><p>Whatever idiotic thing Lavender had said, at least Ron had most assuredly chucked her on the way back from Hogsmeade.</p><p>Ron sighed wearily, and with a frown said, “Can you lay off?”</p><p>“Why should I?” Harry said, and then looked once more at Ron’s face. He figured out what he’d missed, and said, “You didn’t chuck her?”</p><p>“Should I have done?” Ron said. “Because Hermione said so?”</p><p>“Hermione didn’t tell you to chuck her, but I don’t much see the appeal in keeping her around,” Harry said.</p><p>“She cares about me, that’s why!” Ron said.</p><p>“Cares about you? Oh, she shows her affection by spending all your money?” Harry said. </p><p>“What?” Ron said, as if he couldn’t remember or wouldn’t acknowledge the obvious ploy with the pumpkin tart.</p><p>“She said I should be out hunting Voldemort, instead of being in school,” Harry said.</p><p>“That wasn’t about you!” Ron insisted.</p><p>“How do you reckon that, exactly?” Harry said, genuinely incredulous. </p><p>If there was another Chosen One, Harry would love to hand his project notes over to the bloke and let him take over the job. How could Lavender’s comments have pertained to anyone else?</p><p>Harry knew Ron well, after five years of friendship, and all the strange, high-stakes things they’d been through. He could tell by his pained expression that Ron wished to explain further, but wished just as powerfully that Harry could just trust him and understand so that he wouldn’t have to explain. Whatever was behind all this, Ron truly  believed that Lavender hadn’t meant any harm.</p><p>“Ron…I don’t think Lavender’s good for you,” Harry said, but, he too had wandered into sensitive territory. </p><p>How could he say, in words so careful they didn’t end with Ron sucker-punching him, that any woman who would demand to be spoiled financially in light of Ron’s family’s circumstances wasn’t exactly pure-hearted?</p><p>“You sound like my mum,” Ron scoffed.</p><p>“She doesn’t like Lavender, either?” Harry asked, confused at when Mrs. Weasley could have met Lavender.</p><p>“No, ‘course not, but I just know she’d hate her. Same reason she hates Fleur. She hates anyone…glam, you know?” Ron said.</p><p>“I don’t mind her being glam, I just think she was out of line,”  Harry said.</p><p>“Look, I can’t go into it, but she explained to me why she said what she said, and it wasn’t really about you, she was trying to prove something to me. And, you know what? I feel free, now that I see what she’s talking about. It explains a lot. And, I’m done wasting my time caring, frankly,” Ron said.</p><p>“Er…yeah,” Harry said, thoroughly confused. </p><p>Ron patted Harry consolingly on the shoulder, and said, “So, anyway, promise me you’ll try to be nice to Lavender?”</p><p>Harry wasn’t sure what to say. He was sure that Ron would have broken up with Lavender, after that ‘Chosen One’ remark…sure that Ron would understand how out of order it was. Why shouldn’t he go to school? What was he meant to be doing?</p><p>Harry looked at Ron, as if trying to see through his face spotted with freckles, his aquiline nose and blue eyes, as if to see through him to what he really thought. </p><p>“Yeah, sure,” Harry felt himself agreeing mechanically, and feeling slightly floaty, as if he had taken too much of some kind of potion.</p><p> He still felt awkward as he walked down the stairs. Hermione and Ginny were walking down the stairs of the girl’s dormitory. Hermione was wearing a Muggle party dress, a long-sleeved empire waisted cranberry velvet dress whose hem flared just above her knees, and Ginny wore a long, vibrantly printed dress with big sleeves, and lace and velvet embellishment that Harry guessed Mrs. Weasley had made by hand. It reminded Harry of happy sunlit days at the Burrow, and the colors suited Ginny’s hair.</p><p>“All right- let’s get this over with,” Harry sighed.</p><p>Both girls laughed, and Hermione said, “Harry, it is a party-they’re generally meant to be fun, you know.”</p><p>“I suppose. Its more of an errand, for me,” Harry said.</p><p>“What does Dumbledore want you to ask Slughorn, Harry?” Ginny asked.</p><p>Harry hesitated a minute before telling Ginny. Without anyone making much of a fuss about the change in dynamics, Ginny had become one more person besides Ron and Hermione he could trust with sensitive matters, particularly those related to Voldemort. Harry wasn’t sure what had changed his mind: the way she hadn’t seem very nonplussed to find out that Sirius Black was<br/>
A)	Innocent of all charges, and<br/>
B)	Harry’s godfather, </p><p>to start. Nor had she shown any distaste at living amongst the grime, neglect, and cursed objects at Grimmauld Place; the way she had believed his story about fighting off Dementors on Privet Drive, supported him before his hearing at the Ministry, and heartily danced around chanting, “He got off! He got off!” with her brothers when Harry’s charges were dropped, not to mention the D.A. and the Department of Mysteries. She seemed able to handle whatever was thrown at her-maybe, like her belief that anything was possible, could be attributed to life with Fred and George, with a dash of her father’s even-keel approach to life.</p><p>“Its complicated. We’ve been looking at these memories, from various people, about Voldemort’s life…and there’s a memory that Dumbledore needs from Slughorn. He thinks that I’m the key to getting it out of him,” Harry said.</p><p>“Hmm. Do you think it could have something to do with…you know…when he was Tom?” Ginny said. “I mean, he went here, and Slughorn was his teacher. I was in Snape’s class, writing in my diary, once, in first year, and Tom said, ‘He’s no Slughorn.’”</p><p>Harry and Hermione both looked at Ginny in some shock, that she had brought up Tom Riddle unprompted, and that she had done so calmly and matter-of-factly. Suddenly, her hair and eyes and skin all took on that uncanny radiance that had bathed her when she told Harry off to convince him to let her go to the Department of Mysteries, and right before he had kissed her in the commentary box.</p><p>“I think…it must. But, how do I frame that? ‘Sir, I was wondering, what was Lord Voldemort like as a boy? How were his marks?’” Harry said.</p><p>Ginny laughed wryly, but  Hermione said, “Harry, that’s precisely what you have to figure out how to do, and if Dumbledore asked, it must be important. Think: he’s never asked anything out of you, before.”</p><p>“No pressure, or anything, right?” Harry quipped dryly. Hermione raised her eyebrows, as if to say, ‘Oh, is that how you want to play this?’</p><p>Expertly changing the subject, Ginny turned her invitation over in her hands, read it cursorily, and said,</p><p>“So, the invitation says the party is to be in a tent outside, by the lake. I reckon its Enlarged, like the ones we used at the World Cup.”</p><p>“I’m sure! I’ve never celebrated a wizards’ Autumnal Equinox, before-what should I expect?” Hermione said.</p><p>“I don’t know what to expect out of Slughorn-he’s mad!” Ginny pointed out, and Harry and Hermione laughed. </p><p>The good mood seemed restored, but Harry knew that Hermione was right-he needed to start a charm offensive of some sort on Slughorn. Sure, he praised him in class-thanks to the Prince, whatever Hermione had to say about it-but Harry needed to go deeper. </p><p>As he and the girls left Gryffindor Tower, walking down the grand staircase and the empty corridors of the castle, Harry mulled over the closest relationships he’d had with former Professors. Top of the list, of course, was Lupin: he’d been friends with Harry’s parents in school, was generally warm towards his students, and Harry had needed his help to fight off the Dementors who drained him of all hope and joy when they were near, giving him frightening flashbacks to his parents’ murder.<br/>
That wasn’t a set of circumstances he could duplicate with Slughorn. Then, there had been </p><p>Moody…or, rather, Barty Crouch, a zealot Death Eater who had installed himself at Hogwarts in hopes of killing Harry. Ironically, he had been the first person to tell Harry that he had the makings of an Auror-which was a species of high praise from someone who had spent their whole life evading them. Crouch had gotten close to Harry not out of fondness, but to earn his trust and kill him in a vulnerable moment. That was it, Harry realized. He could not call himself ‘close’ with another professor…except maybe Hagrid, and Dumbledore. He felt a stab of loneliness-in six years of school, not one Professor had liked him specially on his own merit, without having known his parents, first. </p><p>McGonagall often looked at Hermione with a sparkle of pride, perhaps seeing her own younger self in the talented female Gryffindor student, Neville had his bond with Professor Sprout, even Lavender and Parvati were particular pets of Professor Trelawney…in all those cases, it was the way they excelled at each professor’s subject that endeared them. </p><p>‘Slughorn thinks you’re brilliant at Potions, and he invites you to these parties: you’ve got an in, you’ve still got a chance at getting him to trust you,’ Harry reassured himself…but it wasn’t the same as just being liked. Maybe getting close to Slughorn on false pretenses felt a bit…sleazy.</p><p>Ginny nudged Harry’s side. The magically self-operating drawbridge was lowering, and the cool night air was hitting their faces.</p><p>Harry looked up-in the navy blue sky over the dimly glinting lake, the full moon shone large, radiant, and as gold as a Galleon. Hermione gasped in awe, and Harry looked at Ginny’s face: she was smiling serenely.</p><p>“What a beautiful night,” she sighed with absolute, enraptured pleasure. Harry leaned into her voices as if it were birdsong. “Look! That’s the tent!”</p><p>Ginny pointed, and Harry and Hermione turned to regard what looked, at first to Harry, like a great wilting willow. He realized that it was a tent made out of coppery oak leaves, that shimmered with a silver tint, tipped with moonlight.</p><p>Hermione laughed with appreciation, impressed.</p><p>“He might be a bit of a barmy old codger, and more than a bit of an elitist, but Slughorn is talented!” Hermione said.</p><p>They headed to the tent, and even more impressive sights awaited them inside. </p><p>“The Hobgoblins?!” Ginny said, astounded to see the recently reunited wizard rock band playing on a small stage before a shiny wooden dance floor. </p><p>The students who weren’t dancing were milling about-taking in the garlands of pansies, marigolds, black-eyed susans, and chrysanthemums strung overhead, the blue and white pumpkins piled in arrangements about the tent, bobbing for apples in an overlarge cauldron, eating apple slices dunked in caramel fondue, dunking candy apples in caramel and chocolate sauce and covering them in nuts and sprinkles, pouring mulled cider floating with apples carved in the likeness of shrunken heads, helping themselves to pumpkin and blackberry tarts, apple pie topped with vanilla ice cream, blackberry cookies, pumpkin or blackberry ice cream. On a banquet table were full baskets of apples in ever shade, like a color chart of shades of sunset and dawn, a roasted goose, and yet more apple, pumpkin, and blackberry desserts.</p><p>Harry’s mouth quite literally watered. His favorite days at Hogwarts were the feasts: start of the first term, end of the last, Halloween, and the Christmas feast before departure for hols. Slughorn seemed out to rival the school’s established feast days with his private fete. </p><p>“I think its self-serve, Harry,” Hermione prompted him. </p><p>When he looked to his other side, he noticed that Ginny was gone, and was dancing on her own to the Hobgoblins. Her hair tossed this way and that, waving like a banner in the wind. Harry was entranced by the whipping of her vibrant hair, like a flame that wouldn’t be put out…but he also felt a certain wistful disappointment. He couldn’t place why-had he wished Ginny would ask him to dance? Should he have asked her?</p><p>“They’re all right, I suppose…but, I think I still prefer Oasis,” Hermione said.</p><p>“What?” Harry said, bringing his attention back to her. </p><p>“They’re a Muggle band,” Hermione said. “You know,” she prompted, and began singing, “<br/>
‘Someday you will find me/ caught beneath a landslide/ in a champagne supernova/in the sky..”</p><p>Harry smiled-she had a clear, sweet voice, like an animated cartoon princess. He didn’t know the song-he was pretty sure Hermione and Ron had both worked out that he wasn’t exactly treated like Little Lord Fauntleroy by the Dursleys, but he had never gone into particulars-like that they were as likely to let him watch MTV during the summer as they were to adopt him and leave him their house in their will. But, he understood that Hermione felt a bit out of place, too.</p><p>“Musicians know all sorts of songs-why don’t you request it?” Harry said.</p><p>Hermione smiled, and said, “Sure-if you dance with me!”</p><p>Harry hesitated, but Hermione said, “I know what its like…to just want someone, anyone, to want you to be the person they dance with.”</p><p>Harry sighed, relieved. That was it, exactly…in the days since their kiss, Harry had begun to poke at his feelings and wonder, did he want Ginny, herself, or did he want a girl like her?<br/>
Sweet, funny, brave, level-headed, earthy and easy to talk to…but, not Ron’s sister. Because that would be ungrateful, twisted, perverted…</p><p>Hermione skipped off to ask Stubby Boardman and his band to do an Oasis song, and Slughorn made himself known to Harry with a jocular clap on Harry’s shoulder.</p><p>“Harry, m’boy! I wouldn’t have pegged you for a wallflower! I’ve heard you’re generally to be found at the heart of the action!” Slughorn said cheerfully.</p><p>“But, to the side of the dancefloor,” Harry said.</p><p>Slughorn laughed heartily, and slapped Harry’s shoulder some more. He felt a bruise forming.</p><p>“Witty, talented, and just a tad…mysterious-why, pray tell, are you not in Slytherin?” Slughorn said.</p><p>“Self-preservation,” Harry said. </p><p>Slughorn chortled again, his head thrown back. He even wiped a little tear of mirth from his eye. </p><p>“Oh, Harry,” he sighed. “How you remind me of Lily. The exterior, yes, is Mr. Potter’s contribution…ah, but at the heart of you is Lily’s spirit!”</p><p>Harry felt like he had just fallen from his broom. He was thunderstruck whenever Slughorn spoke of Lily this way. It was so unfamiliar, so different from the unanswered questions, lies, anger, and resentment that cloaked his mother’s memory in silence when it came to Petunia, her only living relative, and Harry’s.</p><p>“Have I upset you, dear boy? Should I not bring Miss Evans…rather, Mrs. Potter, up?” Slughorn said.</p><p>Something told Harry that even signing a waver promising not to talk about his favorite former students would not have the desired effect on Slughorn…and Harry’s gut churned like a cauldron boiling at the percolation of an idea, a concept, really, accompanied by the sort of guilt that usually meant Hermione was scolding him…but, he also felt a lance of hope. Could this be his in? It was said that the best lies contained a kernel of truth, after all…</p><p>“No, its not that, its just that…no one talks about her like that. The way you do, Professor. My aunt, who raised me…she’s a Muggle. She hated having a witch for a sister. She hated my mother. I wasn’t allowed to ask questions about my parents, or even say the word ‘magic’, growing up. I never knew I was a wizard. When people talk about my parents…I don’t know what to say. They tell me they were this, they were that, but…I don’t know…I don’t know them,” Harry said.<br/>
To his own ears, he sounded just like Mafalda Prewett. She had said those same things…but, he wasn’t cribbing from her. As he spoke, Harry realized that he hadn’t had to mix the truth in with the lie…it was all truth, buried truth, spilling from him, now.</p><p>Slughorn gave him a curious look…a look so palpably sorry, Harry couldn’t bear it. He hated himself for whining, he hadn’t meant to do that, that wasn’t how to get Slughorn’s trust, it looked like an angle for pity, as if he couldn’t deal, like the rumors Rita Skeeter had written up that he still wept in the night…he couldn’t have people thinking that.</p><p>“Yes, you do! Harry, you do know them! Love is not like magic, whose effect fades when the caster of the enchantment is gone from this ‘mortal coil’. Love is immortal, Harry! It is the only thing that is!” Slughorn said rousingly.</p><p>Oh, was that all. That bit about love. Dumbledore had told him it was his special superpower. Harry was sure he would have preferred the ability to stop the Killing Curse.</p><p>“Yeah. Thanks, Professor,” Harry said, and if it sounded lame to him, the effect his mechanical words had on Slughorn was dramatic-the look in his eye, and the passionate tone of his exhortation about love disappeared, and he was back to his ubiquitous air of the ‘Kindly Old Professor.’ Harry had questioned people about sensitive matters often enough to know that he’d had an opening with Slughorn, and lost it.</p><p>“Do try to have a good time, Harry. Mingle a bit!” Slughorn said, and sounded apologetic.<br/>
He slipped away to talk to none other than Gwyneth Polgreen, the sports journalist who covered the Premier League Quidditch season on TV. She was an attractive strawberry blonde in a clinging green velvet evening gown. </p><p> </p><p>“ ‘Wake up the dawn and ask her why/ a dreamer dreams she’ll never die/ wipe that tear away, now/ from your eye…” Stubby Boardman sang, and Hermione came merrily skipping over to Harry.</p><p>“I did it! I did it! Listen- ‘Champagne Supernova’!” Hermione said elatedly.<br/>
As she was pulling Harry to the floor, he noticed Ginny dancing with the Ravenclaw Keeper, Biggerstaff. His stomach fell to his dress shoes…then he noticed a perfect double of Biggerstaff, talking to Cho Chang at the candy apple station.</p><p>“Twins! That’s Thaddeus, talking to Cho, and Ajax, dancing with Ginny,” Hermione said.</p><p>“A lot of Biggerstaff to go around, I see,” Harry observed.</p><p>“Some would say more to love,” Hermione said, and laughed at Harry’s suddenly grumpy expression.</p><p> Both twins were leanly muscular, tall, with carelessly but appealingly tousled blonde hair and violet blue eyes-if Prince William ever needed body doubles for security purposes, MI-5 could very well tap the Biggerstaff twins. </p><p>Ajax held onto Ginny’s fingertips as she spun in a circle like a mystic, the sleeves of her prairie dress and her long mane of red hair billowing around her as Stubby Boardman sang, </p><p>“You and I/ we’ll never die/ the world keeps spinning round/ I don’t know why…”</p><p>When Harry’s gaze returned to Hermione’s starry dark eyes, they were soft and warm with compassion. She understood, perfectly. </p><p>After a few more fast-paced numbers with a 60s garage rock feel, and Harry's attempts, urged by Hermione, to join the dancing of the rest of the spectators, vigorous jumping about that Harry hoped there was no photographic evidence of in the years to come, the Hobgoblins completed their set to much applause. Slughorn and his array of guests, a mix of students and Hogwarts Old Boys and Girls who had become luminaries in their fields, sat down to dinner. The centerpiece was the goose, which Slughorn informed them was a Michaelmas tradition, and there were also dishes made of autumnal gourds like pumpkins and various sorts of squash. Dessert was predominantly pumpkin and apple themed, but blackberry also had its say in the flavor of the various tarts, cakes, ices, and custards-Slughorn informed them that blackberries went out of season around the autumnal equinox. There were also moon cakes, in honor of the Chinese harvest festival on the Lunar Calendar, and also in honor of that tradition Slughorn also led them out to the banks of the lake to view the honey colored moon. Its golden light touched Ginny’s red hair…as Biggerstaff slipped his arm around her waist. Harry watched as they kissed in the moonlight.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny didn’t know why she kissed Ajax Biggerstaff. Maybe because dancing with him to the Hobgoblins, talking to him, and laughing felt like the exact opposite of walking beside Harry whilst he said nothing, so deep in his thought that his eyes appeared a darker green, like hard, expensive, polished emeralds. She knew that Harry wasn’t the sort of boy to ask a girl to dance as soon as they arrived at a party…but, Neville hadn’t been either, and he’d made an effort, at least, at the Yule Ball. Sure, he’d stepped on her toes half the time, but she hadn’t been a much better dancer than he was, and they had laughed at themselves and made a good time of it all. Harry, on the other hand, was miles away from her, Hermione, and the party in spirit, though his body was beside them. He probably didn’t know it, but when he was distant like that he looked like an ancient wanderer in a young man’s body. It was intimidating, and it was in moments like that in which Ginny was of a split mind: part of her was so desperate to reach him that she almost felt frustrated with him, and herself, and part of her stopped wanting to be apart of his, Ron’s and Hermione’s world of secrets and heroic deeds, and wanted to just dance and eat candy apples, have a good time at a fabulous party and be with a boy who made her feel pretty.<br/>
The lake glittered in front of her with broken slats of reflected moonlight, and Ajax’s big, strong hand gently cupped her chin and coaxed her to look into his eyes. He angled his lips over hers’ and pressed gently against her lips. Ginny had kissed three boys, now: Michael, who went in for the French mode far too quickly and messily, Dean who was hesitant and too gentle, as if they were actors in a show playing roles, and Harry, who had kissed her the way a wave hits one’s feet at the ocean’s edge. He crashed into her, not just physically, but with his essence, his aura, his body heat and his need to kiss someone and be kissed by someone. He kissed hungrily and completely.<br/>
As she kissed Ajax, she tasted pumpkin, blueberry, and apple, cider and wine, but she didn’t feel the way she did when Harry kissed her in the commentary box-as if he needed this like air.<br/>
Did she want to be wanted, needed, or even loved that much? She’d wanted Harry to notice her since she was 10…when he finally did unequivocally, she had pushed him away…and now, once again, she found herself kissing another boy. Ginny didn’t know what it all meant, and she could hardly think straight about it with Ajax’s tongue wriggling in her mouth. She pushed him hard in the solar plexus, and then heard a splash. Ajax landed in the shallow waters at the edge of the lake. Ginny cringed-if being an athlete on co-ed teams had taught her anything, it was that boys loathed being embarrassed by girls. To her surprise, Ajax was sitting in the mud, laughing. He had a charming, booming laugh. They both smiled as their eyes met, and Ginny held her hand out to help him up. Instead, she too fell into the mud. Their laughter rang out over the moonlight dappled water.</p><p> </p><p>Harry turned away from the sight of Ginny and Ajax Biggerstaff laughing, so happy to be together they were oblivious to the mud, and the wet. Harry was stabbed by their happiness and normalcy. Of course, he knew it was better that way…he was wrong to feel anything for Ginny, he’d always known that. Hermione was looking at him, but he ignored her, and went back up to the castle alone. Ron, Dean, Neville, and Seamus’s snores filled the dark room. Without changing his clothes, Harry pitched himself into bed. The full share of his tiredness hit him all at once, and he soon fell asleep. </p><p>For the first time, he dreamed of Tiffany. She had long, shiny black hair like Cho or Granya Fishwick, and piercing blue eyes like Mafalda Prewett. In Harry’s dreams, he felt that he had known her for a very long time, that she knew everything, about the Dursleys, about Sirius, about the prophecy and Voldemort, and more subtle things he had never put into articulate thought or voiced out loud: how he wished there was someone, anyone else to talk to when Ron and Hermione started bickering or were on Prefect duty, not just anyone else but someone he could be a pair with as they were a pair, whether they realized it or not, the squirming mortification he had felt when Mrs. Weasley criticized Sirius or, conversely, when Sirius was obviously drunk, the way things had never felt quite the same with Ron after  the Tri-Wizard tournament, the way he had been surprised and hurt when Percy Weasley stopped acknowledging him and had written Ron to cut ties with him…all the secrets that he carried like badly folded luggage, or some awkward gift  for which he could find no recipient to send. Tiffany accepted them all, and he got the feeling they were having a long talk by the moonlit lake, though he could not, in the dream, hear what they were saying, nor remember when he woke up.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Chapter 16</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Harry has a lesson with Dumbledore; Ginny begins dating a new boy, but has a nasty shock and gets revenge for it.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry sat down at Dumbledore’s desk.</p>
<p>“Lemon drop, Harry?” Dumbledore asked, and added, with a cheeky sort of sparkle in his eyes, “humble fare, I’m sure, after Horace’s little fete?”</p>
<p>Harry allowed himself a bemused smirk and small laugh before reaching into the candy jar.</p>
<p>“Honestly! The state of those nails!” Sirius’s grandfather, Phineas Nigellus Black, said from his portrait, with a scowl. Harry ignored his criticism, and pulled out a candy.</p>
<p>“Your initial opinion of Horace was…shall we say, ambivalent. Have you amended it since?” Dumbledore asked.</p>
<p>Just weeks ago, Harry would have been flattered that Dumbledore was asking his opinion. However, he knew now that this was a nicety, a sort of gentle way of guiding Harry along-he had a point to make. </p>
<p>“I think that he can be kind. He seemed to…feel sorry for me. Not that I wanted him to, or anything, but, I think he really liked my mum. I had no idea…” Harry said, and stopped.</p>
<p>“No idea of what? Do, go on, Harry,” Dumbledore said graciously.</p>
<p>“I had no idea that she was so talented,” Harry said.</p>
<p>Dumbledore raised an eyebrow, seeming somewhat surprised.</p>
<p>“None of us think often enough of our mothers,” Dumbledore said. </p>
<p>Harry wasn’t sure if the remark was well-meaning, cryptic, or both. He thought of the way Ron had marveled, “He’s mad! Completely mad!” at the first start of term feast they’d ever attended, after Dumbledore uttered a speech that consisted of the words, “Nitwit, blubber, oddment, and tweak.” He was certainly an eccentric, Dumbledore. </p>
<p>“How should I ask him, sir?” Harry asked. “About Voldemort?”</p>
<p>“I’m sure you’ll know best when, and how,” Dumbledore said. “Now, to the matter at hand. Tonight, we will be viewing the memory of Elsa Bryant, who grew up with the boy who became Lord Voldemort, at the orphanage he so loathed.”</p>
<p>Harry was surprised that Dumbledore had switched gears so abruptly, had not advised him further about Slughorn. For the life of him, Harry didn’t know how he was meant to parlay Slughorn’s praise of Harry’s Potions class performance and fondness for the memory of Lily into reminiscence about the school days of the wizard he so feared, he had turned himself into a sofa. There were dots, that needed to be connected, and Harry didn’t feel that he was the man for the job: it had escaped his notice to ask a girl to dance whilst standing just a few feet to the side of a dance floor, after all. </p>
<p>Once again, he and Dumbledore went into the memory, and he and Dumbledore observed what, to Harry, sadly, seemed a rather mundane case of bullying.</p>
<p>“Tom, you took it, didn’t you?” Elsa demanded. “Give it back!” </p>
<p>She was a slip of a girl in a gray dress that looked as if it had been sewn from fabric delivered to the orphanage sun-bleached and worn already, and Harry empathized with and liked her spirit as she demanded her locket back from Tom, who remained aloof and impassive. Harry could tell that this was going on longer than he would’ve liked-he was growing bored with Elsa’s anger and emotionality. Probably, he was used to his victims being too afraid to approach him, this way, or he was able to use a subtle, magical push to convince the other children that their suspicions of him were wrong. Neither seemed to work on little Elsa Bryant, whose fiery attitude struck a chord of familiarity within Harry. Her hair was more coppery than fiery red…she had far fewer freckles…and her eyes were green-flecked hazel rather than light honey brown…but, Harry had to admit that she reminded him of Ginny Weasley at 11, standing up to Malfoy in Flourish and Blott’s.</p>
<p>When they were out of the memory, Dumbledore asked, “What did you observe?”</p>
<p>“He’s a thief. When you went round to the orphanage, to tell him that he was a wizard, he had that cupboard full of stolen things. And he stole Elsa’s locket, the only thing she had left of her mother,” Harry said.</p>
<p>Dumbledore nodded. “And, what was he doing before that? Just prior to stealing Elsa’s locket?”</p>
<p>“That boy…he made him fall out of the tree, he did it with his mind,” Harry said, and added, “did the boy live, Sir?”</p>
<p>“Yes, according to Elsa’s recollection,” Dumbledore said. “I want you to understand, that to Lord Voldemort’s mind, these actions are linked. He took Elsa’s locket to commemorate retaliating at little Ernest Gilchrist, young Tom Riddle’s only viable competition for the dominant schoolyard bully of the orphanage.”<br/>This called to mind Mafalda Prewett’s flippant statement about Malfoy: “He never had an original idea in his life.”</p>
<p>As if reading Harry’s thoughts, Dumbledore said, “Those who seek absolute, despotic power tend to crib examples from their predecessors. Much of Voldemort’s philosophy, for example, of wizards bringing Muggles to heel and assuming dominance over them, had already found circulation in Grindelwald’s movement, twenty years prior. As for his, and his follower’s fixation with blood purity, those ideas are twice-baked, as well, but in their modern incarnation, they can be traced to Cantankerus Nott’s contribution to the dubious field of magical eugenics, the list of the Sacred 28 families of  Britain, the most pure wizarding bloodlines in the nation.”</p>
<p>“So, you’re saying that Voldemort cobbled together Nott’s blood purity ideas, and Grindelwald’s mission to stamp out Muggles, and created the Death Eaters, Sir?” Harry asked.</p>
<p>“And, add to that his own preoccupation with snakes because of his ancestry, but, in a word: yes, Harry. And I might add, well done,” Dumbledore said.</p>
<p>Harry allowed himself a smile. “Thank you, Sir,” he said politely.</p>
<p>Dumbledore looked at him as if waiting for something. A small silence ensued, and then he gave a little sigh.</p>
<p>“Half-credit, Harry. You are not quite done,” Dumbledore said.</p>
<p>A bubble seemed to burst, and Harry’s stomach sank. Not quite to the depths it had when Ginny kissed Ajax Biggerstaff, but he didn’t feel like a winner, either.</p>
<p>“Trophies,” Dumbledore said. “When Voldemort feels he has gained ascendance over an obstacle in his path, he marks the occasion with a trophy. I did, indeed, as you pointed out, find a cache of stolen trinkets in Tom’s cupboard-and I would wager each of the children that he stole them from had something that he wanted. And he took something to commemorate his victory. In this case, he won his desired status as the most feared boy from Ernest, and took Elsa’s locket…but, as to why the locket seemed desirable to him, we shall discuss another time. To bed, now, Harry.”</p>
<p>Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about how their session had gone, as he walked under his father’s cloak, of course, back to Gryffindor Tower. His head was dizzy with questions, of course: why would Voldemort care about a little girl’s locket? What was the meaning of these memories? Did Dumbledore truly think Harry’s performance was ‘half-credit’? Were these sessions some kind of test, or training, whose purpose he would understand, later? And, if he performed well, would Dumbledore ask Harry to be his apprentice? He couldn’t deny it, since Ron had brought up the idea, it had stuck with him. As he watched Hermione, Dean, and even Neville (who was leaning towards an Herbologist in New Jersey-the Garden State, after all) compare apprenticeship options, he did sometimes notice his fellow Gryffindors give him a look, of both expectance and respect: they assumed that he would be Dumbledore’s apprentice, and only awaited Harry’s confidence and confirmation. </p>
<p>There was something dreamlike about his secret meetings with Dumbledore. When Harry awoke properly the next morning, they seemed to have happened in a surreal corridor of bended time which did not touch the normal order of his day. All the talk at breakfast was of Gryffindor’s chances in their double matches, the first against Hufflepuff. Imogen Appletree wasn’t exactly what Harry would call formidable, but he had come to see that there was more to winning than catching the Snitch. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Ginny was excited by the idea of two upcoming matches, two chances to escalate Gryffindor’s standing in the race for the House Cup, but she felt awkward pitching in and giving Harry pointers. For one thing, everyone else seemed to be doing so, and Harry was fielding their suggestions and questions with a solemnly benevolent patience that reminded Ginny of a young king taking petitions. For another, she was aware that she had been giving him a hard time-letting Peakes get her goat, threatening to quit the team if she had to play with him, mouthing off to Harry in front of the team…and telling him that she didn’t need or want him right after that ardent kiss. She should give him a break, she figured, before he thought ill of her, and, maybe ended his friendship with her brothers. Harry distanced himself when he thought he had wronged someone-what would she say to everyone if he didn’t turn up for Christmas and summer hols? Her mother was determined to give him all the motherly love she had spotted quite early on he didn’t get from his Muggle relatives, and Ginny didn’t want to get in the way of the bonds that Harry had with her family. It was better to act natural.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>At Quidditch practice throughout the week, Ginny was determined to work hard. Katie and Dean’s idea to set up goals between the Chasers the way basketball players did, acting as point guard, center, and power forward had taken hold in Harry’s imagination, and she, Katie and Demelza dedicatedly practiced both those scenarios as well as more traditional plays. She felt a good chemistry and cohesion with this line-up, although she was a bit saddened at Dean’s absence. He had been curious about Quidditch for some time, and after that first practice, Ginny had seen by his elated, electrified expression that he now knew its joys firsthand. The kiss that Ron had so viciously interrupted had, in fact, been her best kiss with </p>
<p>Dean yet, and remained so for the duration of their relationship: the way their shared joy and excitement had rolled back and forth between them, and liberated them physically and emotionally. Ron’s interruption had been twice as jarring, since Ginny had felt so free just moments before, in Dean’s embrace.</p>
<p>Luckily, there was no chance of such things happening with Ajax. Leave it to a Ravenclaw to know enchanting hidden corners of the school, to slip away to. The week after Slughorn’s autumn equinox party, Ginny felt a buzz of excitement whenever her feet touched the flagstones of the corridor-at any time, she might unexpectedly feel Ajax’s strong arm slip around her waist, or his large, warm hand on her shoulder, and turn around to see a mischievous and confident sparkle in his eye and smirk on his lips, confidently saying without words, ‘Can you slip away?’</p>
<p>The answer was always yes. Ginny could feel the chemistry, the physical appreciation and desire to be close, building between them, mounting until the right moment, when they were all alone, at the end of one of his little expeditions. </p>
<p>“Did you know that Hogwarts used to have a chapel? Before Henry VIII outlawed the Catholic Church in Britain,” he might say, and lead her to a mossy stone chapel in a wild, lonely part of the castle grounds, which might be mistaken for a formation of boulders covered in verdant, spongy moss but for the stained glass windows glittering colorfully with borrowed autumn sunshine. They entered, and their bodies met upon a cool wooden pew, Ginny clinging fiercely to Ajax’s broad shoulders, and kissed him the way Harry had kissed her, with direct and ardent need. <br/>“Have you ever been to the cottages? The Hogwarts staff used to be much bigger, and wizards used to have huge families-its where the staff used to live, instead of in quarters at the castle,” he’d say, and lead her to buildings that would be considered handsome manors otherwise, stately Georgian brick homes that once housed the bustling families of Hogwarts professors. There they fell to kissing as if they had waited ages, not the span of a walk around the castle grounds, on canopied beds with carved posts, one whose headboard was carved like the head of a swan from what Ginny was sure was ivory.</p>
<p>If weather was foul, however, and a trek through the mud of the castle lawns and courtyards hardly seemed romantic, they would slip off to the Astronomy Tower. She’d heard that students snuck up there to snog during the day, but she hadn’t dated Michael long enough to go there, and at the mutual age of 14 they kissed seldom, in bursts of boldness. As for Dean, he was far too proper. Ajax was 17, and Ginny was certain that he had ample experience; he was confident enough to be playful, and skillful in his touch. Ginny felt safe and excited with him, and let go the way she had before Ron interrupted her and Dean. If she sometimes thought, for stray and unbidden seconds, about the sunset on the other side of the glass of the commentary box, about Harry’s emerald eyes glowing with their light before she closed her eyes while they kissed, she could easily swat them away, and focus on the shivers, frissons, and detonations happening inside her body. </p>
<p>Between practice and Ajax, Ginny was finally starting to feel like a normal Hogwarts student-her life was busy and fun.</p>
<p>“Are you studying for O.W.Ls?” Hermione reminded her more than once.<br/>“Of course,” Ginny said promptly, and it wasn’t a lie…it was just hard to concentrate on never-ending lists of Charms and Transfiguration formulas when as she sat alone at a carrel in the library, memories of a trip to the Chapel, the Cottages, or the Astronomy Tower with Ajax rose in her mind, and her body followed, feverish chills and echoes of little detonations she had felt beneath his hands came to her, and made her crave a repeat performance.</p>
<p>Hermione handed her an armful of Dueling Club  fliers. Ginny made a beeline for Ajax, whom she spotted standing beside his twin brother, Cho Chang, and a tall, slender girl with glossy chestnut brown hair, by a stained glass window on a stair landing.</p>
<p>“Interested in Dueling?” she asked Ajax.</p>
<p>He smirked, the same naughty smile he gave her when he wanted a moment alone and knew she would follow. He had that irresistible combination in a man, a strong jaw and girlish lips, the Renaissance’s two great subjects, David and the Madonna, combined beautifully. He held up his wand, assumed a dueling pose, and said, <br/>“En guarde!” </p>
<p>Ginny, and the assembled Ravenclaws laughed. Ginny playfully slapped Ajax’s taught belly, and said, suggestively, “Put that thing away!”</p>
<p>Ajax’s laughter and good-humored expression died, and so did the brown-haired girl’s. Ginny got the distinct impression that she had said the wrong thing, but shook it off. Ravenclaws could be a little aloof, even awkward.<br/>“What do you think, Mena?” he asked the brown haired girl. <br/>She gave Ginny a pointed look, and a sniff. Cho looked from Mena to Ginny, as if trying to figure out what was going on. </p>
<p>“I told you about it, remember Philomena?” Cho said.</p>
<p>“If I can fit it in. I do have Charms Club, and Harmonic Gymnastics, and-” Philomena listed, but Ginny interrupted,</p>
<p>“This is much more important than any of that. Voldemort is back, and its important to learn how to defend yourself,” Ginny interrupted. </p>
<p>Philomena frowned in scrutiny as she looked searchingly at Ginny.</p>
<p>“Oh, is that right?” she said, in a cool, arch voice. </p>
<p>She had an unflappably posh air, but was clearly displeased about something. Ginny chalked it up to her family’s reputation: blood traitors, poor, a child every year, redheaded and freckled, Dumbledore’s pawn, et cetera and so forth.</p>
<p>“If you don’t think Voldemort or his followers are a threat, you’re wrong, and thinking like that is just going to make you vulnerable,” Ginny said. “Come, check out Dueling Club, you’ll learn life saving magical tactics.”</p>
<p>“Hear, hear, Weasley. I’ll be there with bells on,” Cho said. Ginny smiled. Cho really was all right, Ginny regretted hating her from afar for so long, because Harry fancied her. </p>
<p>She couldn’t say the same about Philomena, however. Her stare had a cold temperature, and the frost increased with every second. Ajax and his brother, Thaddeus, exchanged a look. Except from Cho, Ginny was beginning to feel as if her presence wasn’t wanted. She had fit in fine with Michael’s friends, and they were all Ravenclaws, so her house wasn’t the issue…maybe it was because she was a 5th year ,and they were 7th? Her family? The fact that she had used Voldemort’s name?</p>
<p>“Can we sign the roster?” Cho asked.</p>
<p>Ginny presented a copy of it, and Cho signed, as did Thaddeus and Ajax, and, with a look of quietly seething outrage at Ginny, first, the tall, slender, pretty girl with arresting hazel eyes, settled her long, chestnut brown hair behind one ear and signed in a beautiful hand, ‘Philomena Fotheringhay’. Ajax caressed her sides, and kissed first the top of her head, and then she tilted her face up, he bent down, and they kissed briefly and casually upon the lips. </p>
<p>Ginny felt her face run hot and cold; she was sure that her face was turning one shade of red after another, like an unfolding sunset. Cho looked at her sympathetically, but Ginny didn’t want pity. She held the Dueling Club fliers close, and quickly turned down another corridor, as quickly as she could. She went to the library, just because it was close and its doors were open. She stole down a dark tunnel of shelves, taking comfort in the cool and the dark and the old books…</p>
<p>Ginny caught her breath. She had never been in this position before, so the clues hadn’t been apparent to her, before…now, it all added up: the way Ajax never hailed her at meal times in the Great Hall, where the general student body could see them talking to one another…the way he only took her to forbidden or abandoned spots around the castle… it wasn’t because he was so enamored of her…it was because she wasn’t his girlfriend: Philomena was! She’d been so intoxicated by the wicked sensations of his touch and giddy thrill of slipping around the castle with a handsome, older boy with a deep voice, ocean blue eyes, and big hands, that she hadn’t thought about the fact that he never spoke about his friends or his life, never asked her about her friends, interests, day, or family…It had all happened so fast…</p>
<p>“Ginevra!” Ajax called.</p>
<p>Ginny came out. She never thought of hiding. If she could face her second year, after unleashing a basilisk on everyone, she could face some boy, no matter what he had done. She walked out of the stacks, and faced Ajax.</p>
<p>She spoke first.</p>
<p>“Philomena. She’s your girlfriend. What am I, then? And answer carefully,” Ginny said, and pointed her wand, not in jest, as he had, but in earnest.</p>
<p>“Look, Ginevra…” Ajax said, and ran his hands through his thick blonde hair. “I didn’t think you particularly cared. We were both just scratching an itch, weren’t we?”</p>
<p>Ginny felt as if she was turning to cold, hard, immortal, glacial ice. There was ice in her voice as she demanded, “An itch?”</p>
<p>“You walked into the party, hanging all over Potter, but everyone knows he only has eyes for Granger. So, what did you do? You decided to have a bit of fun. And we had some laughs. Its been a good week. But, if you embarrass me in front of Mena like that, again…I might just have to tell someone that your attentions to me have gotten uncomfortable. Do you understand?” Ajax said, and all that was beautiful about him was twisted into a lovely mask over bestial cruelty…like Tom. </p>
<p>The little girl whose last sight before falling unconscious was the face of her ‘friend’, not alive but more than a ghost, the boy she had poured a second life into, a life that he was stealing as her breathing and her heartbeat slowed, woke up, made herself known with a stitch of fear in Ginny’s belly and chest.<br/>But, she reminded herself that she wasn’t that little girl anymore.</p>
<p>“Sorry to make you uncomfortable. Go find some other dumb fifth year the next time you want to scratch an itch,” Ginny said, and cast, “Irritatione!”</p>
<p>“Damn, you are keen on dueling. A bit early aren’t you? The club doesn’t meet till…” Ajax started off….then his eyes widened as Ginny’s jinx took effect. His handsome face blanched in shock, and she knew what he was feeling-a sharp, jarring, sudden, and intense itch in the bum.</p>
<p>She held her hands against her stomach as she tried to hold in her laughter, watching big, tall, handsome, manly Ajax’s cheeks puff out as he held his breath, and tried to subtly scratch himself through his black school trousers. He rubbed his bum desperately against bookshelves, against tables, swallowing a guttural scream, he writhed on the carpeted floor. His eyes bulged desperately, and they were full of tears that would not fall at the strength of the powerful itch, in the region he dare not touch in the sight of others.</p>
<p>“What in Circe’s name is wrong with that boy?!” Madam Pince, the vulture-like librarian demanded, swooping down the stacks to where Ginny stood, and Ajax rolled on the carpet at her feet.<br/>“He’s got an itch that he just can’t scratch,” Ginny said, her wand behind her back.<br/>“Hospital wing, Mr. Biggerstaff,” Pince said, and helped Ajax to his feet. He walked shakily, delicately massaging his bum as he walked.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Chapter 17</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ginny is insulted by Philomena, but comforted by Cho, Luna, and Hermione</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Trigger Warning: Philomena calls Ginny a 'slut', but not only is she called out by Cho and (in her quirky way) Luna, Hermione gives us a little lesson in feminism. Don't worry, Philomena gets her comeuppance and then some, later in the story.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“This is a whale song I heard on a whale watching trip I took to visit my granny in the San Juan Islands, in the States,” Cho said, and put her wand to her temple. </p><p> </p><p>Ginny, and the rest of Mindfulness Club, watched as silver strands like tatters of spider silk emerged from her head, drawn out by the tip of her wand. Cho placed them in a wooden bowl sitting on a small table, and from the bowl rose the music of whales calling to each other in the Pacific Ocean. Ginny wasn’t sure what Charm she had just performed-of course a Ravenclaw would know something so advanced, and of course Cho would perform magic so beautiful. Her Patronus, Ginny recalled, had been beautiful, too: a phantasmagoric swan that had sailed out of her wand in the Room of Requirement. Her own had been a horse, that, like Ginny, charged wildly and fiercely forward…but, as her mum said, ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’. </p><p>As Ginny lay on a woven Mexican blanket in the Ravenclaw common room, a montage of embarrassing images rose in her mind: her own voice as she told Harry that she didn’t want him after they kissed, Philomena looking at her with disgust, at what Ginny now knew was her own audacity for flirting with Philomena’s boyfriend right in front of her, Ajax telling her they were just mutually scratching an itch, surprised that she’d thought she was his girlfriend, that he liked her…She had thought that, even if it had just been a week, and it had hurt when his voice and eyes turned cold and he told her not to embarrass him again…She hadn’t expected that…hexing him had been hilarious, and had made her feel better for a little while, but the embarrassment hadn’t gone away…</p><p> </p><p>“If you find that your thoughts have wandered, tune back into your breathing, and focus on that,” Cho instructed them, just in time for Ginny.<br/>
She breathed slowly, into the bottom of her belly, feeling it rise and fall, and found that when she was thinking of Harry and Ajax, she had not felt the rhythm of her breath, nor had she truly heard the music of the whales.<br/>
“Your heart chakra is verdant,” Luna said warmly, when the meeting was over, and everyone was rolling up their blankets.<br/>
“That’s a good thing, right?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“The Sanskrit name for the heart chakra is Anahata-that means ‘the unstruck sound’. Why do you suppose that is?” Luna asked.<br/>
“Great, you have to solve a riddle to leave the common room as well as enter it, now?” Ginny joked.<br/>
Cho walked over to them, and said, “Ginny, can I talk to you for a bit?”<br/>
Ginny looked at Luna, asking her friend’s permission if she stepped away. People were so unkind to Luna, Ginny wanted to make sure she understood that she wasn’t ditching her.<br/>
“I suppose its to do with Quidditch,” Luna said, as if that was her cue to leave, and floated away, her silver blonde hair waving behind her.<br/>
Cho walked Ginny to the large windows, and their view of the mountains and lake.<br/>
“Look, if this is you trying to be a good friend to Philomena by telling me to stay away from her bloke, don’t bother. Ajax already told me that I was nothing to him,” Ginny said. </p><p>Cho blinked, taken aback. “Actually, I wanted to know if you were all right. I could tell it was a nasty shock to you, that Ajax is dating Philomena. He never should have fooled around with you, like that.”</p><p>Ginny wanted to get away. She didn’t want to think of how forward and free she had been with Ajax. She had thought…what had she thought? That he was a charming, gallant, handsome seventh year who adored her, just like Cedric Diggory had adored Cho unequivocally when he was Ajax’s age, and Cho was Ginny’s? Who hadn’t admired them, that year, watched them dance at the Yule Ball? The lights of the chandelier in the ballroom had struck them like the halos of saints in an old gold-cloth tapestry. They looked like Cupid and Psyche, the youngest and happiest of the Olympian gods, the god of love and his beloved. Ginny didn’t realized she had kept that story treasured in her heart for two years until she believed herself to be living it with Ajax. Ginny was embarrassed…she had envied Cho twice, over Harry and Cedric, or, at least, her relationship with Cedric, how loving, mature, glamorous and true it seemed to be. </p><p>Ginny didn’t know what to say. Cho seemed sweet…she didn’t know that Ginny had envied her, because of Harry…and Cho was on her side, it seemed, in the Ajax matter…she wondered if she could take the offer for a long, honest talk she saw shining from Cho’s eyes. Before she could do so, however, a group of Ravenclaw students walked into the common room, including Philomena Fotheringhay. Ginny flushed with chills of embarrassment, but she knew that she had to face her, just as she had Hermione, Penelope, and Colin after petrifying them. She started to walk over to Philomena, already rehearsing in her head what she was going to say: ‘You deserve an explanation,’ for a start. </p><p>Philomena’s cool gray eyes cradled fiery flecks like opals, and Ginny could feel hatred and disgust radiating from them as she said, “What is this slut doing here? She’s Gryffindor.”</p><p>Ginny froze. Is this what her victims had felt like in her first year, when the basilisk she cooked herself from the egg of one of Hagrid’s hens, in secret in that cold, dark chamber, had gazed at them and frozen them in place?</p><p>Cho glared frostily at Philomena, and said, “Language like that isn’t appropriate. Should I tell a Prefect?”</p><p>“You know, ‘slut’, although it is often used pejoratively to denote a woman of loose morals, comes from a Saxon word for ‘girl’. Its not pejorative to be a girl, is it?” Luna said.</p><p>Philomena frowned at Luna as if her words were incomprehensible, but Ginny appreciated her support, and gave Luna a warm smile even though she was still shaken. </p><p>“Ajax told me about you, about how you’ve been following him and clinging to him, coming onto him at all hours since Professor Slughorn’s dinner party. He isn’t interested in gypsy sluts, Weasel. Why don’t you go play with your snake?” Philomena said, and with a pointed swish of her thick, glossy chestnut brown hair, she stalked up the stairs to the girl’s dormitory.</p><p>Ginny felt sick. Cold, hot, and frozen, but a wildfire beneath her skin. She barely felt Cho’s hand rubbing her back, and barely heard her murmurs of, “Are you all right?”</p><p>When Ron had stopped just short of calling her the word that Philomena just had, she had raged at him, even Harry’s appeals had just barely held her back. She had nearly hexed her own brother. But, when Philomena said it, she had been too shocked, and had felt more diminished and pierced by it. Was it the hatred poured into the words, was it because Philomena was a girl, like her, because she did feel that she had wronged Philomena and was already feeling guilty? Either way, this was the closest Ginny had come to tears since her father was attacked by Voldemort’s snake last Christmas. She didn’t know how she made it back to Gryffindor Tower, she seemed to float there. She’d tried to play ‘happy couple’ with a boy she barely knew, and had ended up being called a slut by his girlfriend. Ginny lay on her bed, and barely cared when Hermione came into the room they now shared, since McGonagall rearranged the roommates. She didn’t care if Hermione saw her cry. </p><p>“Ginny,” she said, her voice shot with concern. “What happened?”</p><p>She sat up, faced her best friend, and as she tried to compose herself-Ginny hated to cry because once she started, she couldn’t stop easily-it all came tumbling out: kissing Harry in the commentary box, his girlfriend Tiffany, Ajax, the week after Slughorn’s party, sneaking around and kissing in the forgotten quarters of Hogwarts, and the confrontation with Philomena at Mindfulness Club. </p><p>Hermione sighed. “I’ve heard of her from the Ravenclaw Prefects, Philomena. She’s the worst sort of bully-the kind you can’t prove anything on because she only targets other girls, and no one takes disagreements between girls seriously. But, when one girl sets out to destroy another, its worse than bullying: its practically a murder plot,” she said.</p><p>“Is it really her fault? I mean, I would be just as nasty to a girl who tried it on with my boyfriend,” Ginny said.</p><p>“Well, then both your thinking is a bit flawed, don’t you think? You’re not Philomena’s sister or friend, you owed her nothing. It was down to Ajax to have a bit of bloody self-control,” Hermione grumbled. “He ignored Philomena’s existence, and didn’t trouble to inform you of it! Its easier for her to hate you, because she doesn’t want to give up on him, so she blames you.”</p><p>“I suppose. But…I’m bloody embarrassed, Hermione! I haven’t been stalking him and begging for it, but I didn’t run him a merry chase, either. I wanted Ajax, and I never hid it,” Ginny said.<br/>


</p>
<p>“Ginny, why shouldn’t you have wanted him? Why shouldn’t you have gone after what you want? You aren’t with anyone. You were free, he wasn’t, and should have been honest with you, and with himself, and her,” Hermione said. “There’s nothing inherently wrong with a woman acting on their feelings; there are just a slew of poxy rules governing it! And that, Ginevra, is called the patriarchy.”</p><p>“I was mad. I don’t know why I went after him as hard as I did. I just, fell into things with him. I suppose I’m used to just falling into things with blokes, aren’t I? It felt good, to have someone by my side, someone who thought I was pretty and sexy, someone to turn around and kiss or snuggle up to, when I felt like it. I like having a bloke,” Ginny said, and shrugged. </p><p>“And, there’s nothing at all wrong with that, either…but, Ginny, did you really fancy Ajax, Dean, and Michael…or did you just want a boy to replace what you couldn’t have with Harry? Did you ever stop wanting it to be him, the one you were with?” Hermione asked, astutely.</p><p>“You told me I should get over it, if it was just going to cause me pain to always be hung up on him and waiting for a sign that he cared,” Ginny said.</p><p>“Well, yes, you were such a nervous wreck, not just with Harry, but with everyone. I wanted you to open up, make some friends, live your life…but, do you think perhaps what you heard, or what it devolved into, is taking up with boys who were interested in you, even if you weren’t interested in them, to forget how you really feel about Harry?” Hermione said. </p><p>She had graciously focused in on the Ajax matter, and was not repudiating her for kissing and pushing away Harry, Hermione’s best friend.<br/>
Ginny sighed. She looked into the mirror across from her bed. She thought of a  David Bowie song she heard on her dad’s clandestine collection of vinyl records, that went, “So, I turned myself to face me/ but I’ve never caught a glimpse.”</p><p>She hadn’t examined her behavior as a pattern until now, when the pattern didn’t go the way that it usually did. She’d been the one to chuck both Dean and Michael, and it had been rather easy because she had never been terribly passionate about either of them. She had been passionate about Ajax, or rather what he represented to her: a sort of Witch Weekly Best Smile Award dreamboat, tall and easygoing, a toothsome smile and blue eyes, a deep voice, about to graduate, and a damn good kisser. She’d been rather swept off her feet, and taken the way he pursued and snuck around with her to be signs of ardor, not a philanderer having a peccadillo. She was let down, she was embarrassed…but, maybe this was how Dean and Michael had felt when she broke up with them…the way Harry felt when she said, “I don’t want to need you, or need anything from you.”<br/>
Ginny felt a scrambling sense of remorse, as if she had broken something precious. She hadn’t realized that, in trying to guard her heart from the vulnerability she had shown Tom, who used it, and Harry, who hadn’t wanted it at the time, that she had been so noncommittal, maybe broken hearts. She had even pushed away Harry, when he finally showed interest, as if reacting to his kiss with the idea buried in her heart that loving him had made her vulnerable to Tom in the first place. In her heart of hearts, had she blamed him? Had she hated ever being a girl with an open heart full of love? If that was how she had acted, no wonder Ajax thought all she wanted was a laugh. She hadn’t even really been able to show him how intoxicated and enchanted with him she’d been at the time.<br/>
Damn Tom Riddle! Damn him! Had she ever been able to get back the parts of her heart and soul she had poured into that diary? Ginny thought she was okay, but now she felt like she was waking up on the cold stone floor of the Chamber of Secrets all over again.<br/>
As if reading her mind, Hermione said, “Sometimes, an experience in our lives seems to repeat itself-but that gives us a chance to do things differently.” She gave Ginny a warm smile, and put her arm around her. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Chapter 18</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Harry and Ginny talk, but Harry makes an assumption about Ginny and Ajax</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks to Pelle and Currer Jean for your advice on the direction of the story! I love coming up with romantic misunderstandings that thwart the course of true love, for a bit...but Harry and Ginny really do need to talk things out:) They are getting there. </p><p>I also want to say, I hope that Ron comes off all right in this story. He has some abrasive, thoughtless qualities to his personality, especially in the sixth book, but I think he tries hard to be loyal in his own way, and I hope both sides of his personality shine through: he might squabble with Ginny, but he also defended her against Peakes and even to Hermione when she told him how Ginny got her Hogsmeade afternoon taken away; he doesn't get why Lavender offends Harry, but he also believes Harry is  a good enough wizard for Dumbledore to take him on as an apprentice, and is trying his best to help him with Quidditch, too. Ron is a gray character, and in writing him I haven't been bashing him, just trying to be true to J.K. Rowling's vision of him. Thanks, guys!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>No new note came from Dumbledore, so Harry felt free to focus on Quidditch for the time being. He asked Ron to help him with plays, but immediately wished he had just checked out the library’s well-loved collection of Quidditch books instead. Ron’s idea of boiling Quidditch down to an art was sitting Harry down before every Chudley Cannons match, blatantly abusing their Prefect and Quidditch Captain privilege to watch the television when no one else was allowed.</p><p>“All right, watch this, Harry. Watch what Greenhalgh does here,” Ron would say, squinting tensely in anticipation at the screen, as if witnessing masters at work. </p><p>Harry wished that he had someone to glance over to and share a bemused glance at his continued adoration for the bottom ranked team, but Hermione was deep in Dueling Club preparations with Dean, and Ginny…well, from what Harry could tell, she hadn’t lost much time after breaking up with Dean. Not only had she and Biggerstaff hit if off like a house on fire, Harry had spied her hurrying after him eagerly, her red hair flying like a wildfire spreading on the horizon, as he led her Harry knew not where, somewhere private. He still felt stirrings when he saw the sunlight on her hair or in her eyes, but in his dreams the taste of honey and the shock of a girl’s soft touch was not always accompanied by Ginny’s face. In his dreams, he was sometimes walking by the sun-dappled or moonlit lake with a girl with dark hair, and almond-flesh skin…a phantasm, he knew, a dream chimaera constructed of Cho’s stunning skin and sweet smile, Ginny’s amber eyes and Granya Fishwick’s hair and slender build…he only knew that he woke up from the dreams sweaty and sated for  few drowsy seconds, and then merely exhausted, with a bit of an ache between his eyes and a yearning, wistful pain in his heart. </p><p> </p><p>“Ugh, not more Quidditch,” Lavender said, flopping onto the couch beside Ron. She picked up the remote, and changed the channel to a music video hour.</p><p>“We’re training,” Harry protested.</p><p>“Its cool,” Ron said, with a listless shrug. </p><p>All the life went out of him around Lavender. As much as he had grown tired of Ron’s and Hermione’s bickering, Harry wouldn’t quite say that he missed it, but at least it was the real Ron: not the green-faced, defeated version of him that listened to Lavender prattle about this supermodel or that Quidditch player’s wife, or that pop star’s latest fling or scandal. She was like a living Witch Weekly magazine, and Ron was willing to sit through her inanity to wait for the snogging to begin. </p><p>‘You just don’t like her because of that Chosen One comment; Ron’s your best mate. Let it go,’ Harry told himself. </p><p>Lavender’s words had been like a worm in an apple, since the Three Broomsticks. At breakfast, when Hermione read out who had disappeared or been murdered, each name was like a stab in the gut. How many of them had died to protect their children, had taken a Killing Curse with their eyes open to give their wife and child time to run, as Harry’s father had, or died to protect their child, the way his mother had. If only he had the guts to tell Dumbledore that the memories of Voldemort weren’t necessary, what he needed to know is how he, Dumbledore, had done it, how had he neutralized Grindelwald? Harry needed to know, needed to stop Voldemort, to make all the pain and death stop…</p><p>“Harry? Are you all right?” </p><p>Harry looked up. He knew when he heard her voice out loud that all fantasies of phantom dark haired girls aside, he still heard that voice in his dreams, saying kind, soft things, saying ‘Wildflower honey’ as the sweet taste of golden honey and crisp, cold, sweet apples flooded his tongue, and it was almost sweet enough to outshine the memory of her saying, “I don’t want to need you.” Ginny. He met her amber eyes.</p><p>“Yeah. Just need to stretch my legs,” Harry lied.</p><p>“Fine by me. I’m sick of studying, I was going to take a walk,” Ginny said.<br/>
Harry gathered, by her tone and the way that she waited behind the couch, that Ginny wanted him to come with her.</p><p>“Sure,” he said.</p><p>He stood, and walked with Ginny, careful to keep a polite distance between them, or rather himself and her fiery, dancing hair, and the sway of her pleated school uniform skirt over her freckled and dimpled shins, and the plain of bare thigh between the hem of her gray skirt and the top of her knee socks. She was, once again, after all, someone else’s girlfriend.</p><p>They walked down the corridor together, passing ghosts, the suspicious eyes of Mrs. Norris the cat, and walking by portraits whose eyes wagged with curiosity.</p><p>“So, how do you like our chances against Hufflepuff?” Harry asked. It was the first of their matches to decide Hufflepuff and Slytherin’s hanging match.</p><p>“Well…” Ginny said thoughtfully, “they’ve got really strong Beaters, so I think you’re going to have to focus hard on Peakes and Coote at practice this week. You’ve seen Ruffle and Trickle-they’re bloody demons!”</p><p>“They think I’m a joke, they don’t listen to anything I say,” Harry admitted.</p><p>“Its not that. They’re young. They like a laugh. Think of you and Ron,  back then-my first year, you stole Mum and Dad’s car and drove it from London to Scotland!” Ginny said, with a residually bemused chortle. “Quite up to Fred and George’s standard, which I know you were aiming for.”</p><p>Harry looked at his shoes. “We weren’t pulling a prank. Dobby closed the portal to Platform 9 and ¾, so we couldn’t get to the Hogwarts Express.”</p><p>“Dobby? That house elf who’s trying to help Hermione free the others?” Ginny asked, with a frown of surprise between her coppery eyebrows.</p><p>“Yeah. He used to belong to the Malfoys. He heard Lucius plotting to do me in, and kept trying to save me…’course, he broke my arm and almost got me expelled,” Harry said. Harry was surprised that Ginny didn’t know all of this-he figured that Ron would have told his family all about his year at school. </p><p>Ginny seemed to be thinking about something deeply. She almost seemed to be adding up figures as if she was doing maths. </p><p>“So…the diary. It was meant for you. But, Malfoy got into that row with my dad, wanted revenge, and decided to kill me, instead,” Ginny said, looking pale and horrified.</p><p>Harry felt a sharper stab than when he imagined the murders of names in the newspapers. He felt the way he had when he entered the Chamber and saw what he thought was Ginny’s dead body. He had begged her not to be dead…maybe she was too shy to talk, but even then he liked her red hair and bright eyes, and as scary as it was to know that a girl liked him, it was nice, too…he just hadn’t known what to say. He wished he could do something to take that look off Ginny’s face as she realized that she had almost been murdered not just because of Lucius Malfoy’s petty wish to humiliate her father, but in Harry’s stead.</p><p>“Ginny, I’m so sorry. It should have been me,” Harry said.</p><p>“What? Harry, no! It shouldn’t have been anyone! It should never be anyone!” Ginny said.</p><p> Just like in the commentary box, passion seemed to light her skin to a pearlescent radiance, and her hair was fire at its most ferocious, a smoldering vermilion, and her eyes….her eyes were firelight in whiskey. But unlike that evening at Quidditch practice when they kissed, there was no setting sun behind her, this was all Ginny’s passion lighting her up from within. Harry couldn’t help it, his mouth dropped, and he felt it water like when he looked at the banquet table at Slughorn’s party. He wanted her so bad, it was a true hunger that gnawed at his stomach, like the hunger for the food the Dursleys denied him. He knew that the body ate its own reserves of nourishment when it was hungry, but it always felt like something trapped and wanting to shred through the confines of his stomach and ribcage, a monster that wanted freedom. </p><p>“I know,” he said, “I know, Gin. I wish I could make it all stop. That’s what I should be out there doing, isn’t it?” </p><p>“What do you mean? Confronting Voldemort?” she said, sounding alarmed.</p><p>“If he’s not going to stop all of this until he kills me, why should I be here, warm, safe, hiding, and letting him kill other people?” Harry said.</p><p>Ginny frowned deeper, looking even more alarmed than at the thought of her own death. </p><p>“Harry, you don’t understand,” she said. “You’re not the only thing he wants. This started before you!”</p><p>That got Harry’s attention. He looked into the inferno of her eyes, waiting for her to continue.</p><p>“Voldemort had been around for decades. He…did horrible things, and more and more people followed him, for years. It was like a dark cloud, or some kind of poison spreading. And towards the end, he was more powerful than the Ministry, more powerful than anyone except Dumbledore. He killed people who had even just been rumored to have disagreed with him, let alone stood against him. He killed my uncles, Gideon and Fabian…” Ginny said.</p><p>Those names struck Harry as familiar…then he remembered the picture of the original Order of the Phoenix that Mad-Eye had surprised him with at Ron and Hermione’s party to celebrate being Prefects, until Sirius had met Harry’s eyes, seen that he was uncomfortable and diplomatically whisked Mad-Eye away. “Gideon and Fabian Prewett,” Mad Eye said, “took five Death Eaters to take them down.”</p><p>He realized now that he had heard of Mafalda’s father! But, he now fully appreciated that he, and his brother Fabian, had been Ginny’s uncles, and Mrs. Weasley’s brothers, as well. Now, her frantic desperation that Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Fred, and George not be involved in the war, her boggart taking the shape of her family’s dead bodies and the way she collapsed weeping into Lupin’s arms, and distaste for Sirius, who was always ready for a good fight, all made sense.</p><p>“You didn’t grow up in our world, hearing those stories…there was so much death, and you, you’re such a miracle to people because you lived,” Ginny said. “He wants you gone because he believes that you’re the only one who can stop him, but you dead isn’t all he wants. He’s always wanted total control of the Wizarding World, and he’s just gone back to trying to take it.”</p><p>Harry swallowed this, and felt his thinking shift. He had been doing just what he had been trying to avoid doing, letting the ‘Chosen One’ mandate go to his head. Now, his emotions felt smaller and easier to manage, and Ginny looked singularly bright and beautiful. </p><p>“I’m so sorry,” Harry said.</p><p>“Damn it, Harry, what are you sorry about now?” Ginny snapped. </p><p>Harry’s eyes widened… but he couldn’t help but laugh. Ginny laughed too, and it only made her more beautiful.</p><p>“I could have put that a different way, I reckon,” she admitted, her face taking on a rosy blush that highlighted her cinnamon freckles.</p><p>“Don’t worry about it,” Harry said.</p><p>When he felt the warmth of Ginny’s shoulder leap through both their merino wool Hogwarts school sweaters, he realized he was standing much too close to Ajax Biggerstaff’s girlfriend. </p><p>“Er, Harry…did you know that Hogwarts used to have a chapel? Its still there, out back, around the greenhouses. Do you want to go there, and talk?” Ginny asked.</p><p>Harry knew he had to resist temptation. He couldn’t trust himself alone with Ginny, couldn’t trust himself not to kiss her again in this chapel, or on the way to it. His skin was screaming, the hunger in his stomach was screaming, he was flooded with happiness at how she had talked him down from darkness, and the assuredness that she was the source of all sweetness…the sweetness he had tasted from the lips of her and the other misty female kisses and touches in his dreams…these dreams were driving him mad, and he had to go before he acted on them.<br/>
“Er…maybe some other time. I have to catch up with Hermione and Dean in the library,” Harry said. “You know, sixth year, N.E.W.T. level work, we’re studying all the time, now.”<br/>
Ginny blinked, and then her features smoothed. “Right,” she said, and left his side, taking the warmth of her arm and the sweet, honeysuckle and dog rose smell of her hair with her.<br/>
Harry listened to the sound of her mary-janes on the flagstones, and even this made him happier than he had been before, until the sound faded.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Chapter 19</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dumbledore was once again absent from the faculty dining table, but, Snape was also. Harry deduced that they had travelled together, and this worried him.<br/>
“Is he mad? Going off alone with Snape?” Harry whispered to Hermione.<br/>
He waited for her to chime in with a rebuttal to his suspicions, as usual. Despite Snape’s antipathy towards her, personally, Hermione still found it difficult to distrust an authority figure, completely; or, maybe it was Dumbledore’s judgement she didn’t question, right away. Instead, it took her a pause to respond, breaking away from Dean to notice that Harry had spoken.<br/>
“Did you say something, Harry?” she asked.<br/>
“Um, never mind,” Harry said.<br/>
“Oy, Harry, I need a jinx that’s relatively harmless, for everyone to practice disarming. Something that their partner can come at them with offensively, and then they defend with Expelliarmus,” Dean said.</p><p>“Oh, good question. Well, there’s this levitation charm, called Levicorpus,” Harry said. “and the counterjinx is ‘Liberacorpus’. We can just put some gym mats down, so no one will have a bad fall on the way down.”</p><p>Dean  laughed, took note of the jinx and counterjinx, and with a charming smile and bright eyes said,<br/>
“Thanks, mate. Oh, and don’t worry, Professor Snape isn’t going to be auditing the meetings, or anything. He said I’m proficient enough in Defense Against the Dark Arts to just lead the class on my own, and report to him with notes on how it went.”<br/>
Harry continued to be surprised that Snape would place so much trust and esteem in a Gryffindor student, but he was more concerned with whatever clandestine journey Snape had taken with Dumbledore. How could he convince the headmaster that Snape could not be trusted? He had spent all the previous year planting the mental seeds in Sirius’s head that he was useless, knowing that Kreacher’s torment about being a disappointment to his family would do the rest of the work. He was in a state of desperation to help the war effort and fear for Harry’s safety when he rushed off to the Ministry, not in his best shape for a wizard’s duel. </p><p>He had gone over and over his godfather’s last days, and now saw his drinking problem and his depression for what they were. It went without saying that the long exposure, a decade and more, to Dementors’ presence had left their mark on his mental health, and he was probably in need of professional care from the Healers of St. Mungo’s-denied to him because he had to live on the run, a convicted escaped felon in the eyes of Wizarding Britain. Harry also saw where he, himself, had failed Sirius: Sirius thrived on feeling needed, when Harry, Ron, and Hermione asked him a question and he busied himself with finding out the answer. Harry had kept so many of the events of his 5th year to himself, and not sought anyone’s help, even his friends, thinking that he was possessed by Voldemort, feeling bruised and alone after Umbridge’s torture…had Snape’s and Kreacher’s taunting hurt so badly because Harry had seemed to reinforce to Sirius that no one needed him?<br/>
He wished he could go back, and tell his godfather that that wasn’t true. Harry needed him, from the moment he had found out that he didn’t betray his parents, and had come to Hogwarts to save him from Pettigrew, not to hurt him. He still needed him, though Sirius lay somewhere behind the Veil, thanks to Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Harry chanced a glance at the Slytherin table, and Draco Malfoy’s platinum blonde head. If Mafalda was right, how many Slytherins had Draco brought over to the Death Eater cause?<br/>
Harry felt like his brain was swelling with dark thoughts, between Dumbledore’s and Snape’s empty chairs, and Draco’s presence, a Death Eater in their midst. He glanced over at Ginny, who was eating with Eloise Midgen, again. A group of Ravenclaw girls were standing around her and Eloise-he recalled that she had a lot of Ravenclaw friends when she dated Michael Corner, and it seemed she had now, too, because of Biggerstaff.<br/>
“Good luck on the match Friday, Weasley. Pounce on Hufflepuff!” one of the girls cried merrily.<br/>
“Pounce, Weasley, Pounce!” the other chanted lustily, and the girls walked away laughing, probably at Hufflepuff’s inevitable defeat. Harry smiled. Ginny was an epically good Chaser-their chances were good.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny waited for the laughter to clear in the air, the way one would wait for a foul smell to dissipate. She tried to dismiss their cruelly cheeky smirks and the nasty glints in their eyes, too. She knew they were friends of Philomena’s, but didn’t know their names. But, they weren’t the first people to shout “Pounce!”, mouth it at her, or say things like that to her that week. She hadn’t hexed anyone, yet, because she didn’t know what they meant, exactly.</p><p>“Excuse me, Eloise,” she said, interrupting Eloise as she recounted the plot of a movie called ‘Clueless’.<br/>
She promised she would make it up to one of her only female friends in Gryffindor later, maybe by actually reading one of those ‘Babysitter’s Club’ novels she was always pressing on her.<br/>
Ginny headed to the Slytherin table. Her cousin Mafalda was in rapt conversation with her best friend, a friendly faced brunette called Igraine Inkpen, a sandy blonde called Tracy Davis, and the gorgeous but aloof blonde Daphne Greengrass, who was in Harry and Ron’s year.<br/>
“Oy, Maffie. Do you know what people mean when they come up to me and say ‘pounce’? What’s that about?” Ginny said, not beating around the bush.<br/>
Mafalda exchanged a look with her friends, and they looked pointedly, involuntarily awkward. Ginny tried not to be shaken by such things. She had been the Heir of Slytherin’s pawn, the “Basilisk Girl”. The last time she had been the subject of rumors, they had all been rooted in truth, and she had learned how to face that, power through it, defend herself when she had to, and disengage when it wasn’t worth it. Now, she felt a small twist in her stomach. If Maffie and her gossipy friends had heard something, there was no chance that Ginny was exaggerating or imagining things.</p><p>“Let’s step away for a moment, Ginevra,” Mafalda said smoothly, and they stepped out of the Great Hall, around the corner in front of some portraits. </p><p>“Well,” Mafalda sighed. “first things first…did you fool around with Ajax Biggerstaff?”<br/>
Ginny groaned, huffed, and rolled her eyes. This, again? When would it die? She had kissed Harry, too, and he had never breathed a word about it, not even to Hermione-she knew because it was news to Hermione when she, Ginny, told her. But every day was a fresh Hell of a reminder that she had fooled around with Ajax. He was throwing her under the bus to save his name with Philomena!</p><p>“Yes,” Ginny sighed. “But, I had no idea he had a girlfriend. She wasn’t at Slughorn’s party, where we met, he didn’t mention her, and I never met her until I came up to him, invited him to Dueling Club. He kissed her, and that was the  first I heard of her!”</p><p>Mafalda laughed spitefully. “Oh, she wouldn’t like hearing that, Mena-not after all the Charms work she put into her little makeover. Unforgettable is what she aims for, after starting out from obscurity,” she said.</p><p>“What d’you mean?” Ginny asked.</p><p>“She was a mousy little crumb before she started putting glamour Charms on her hair, her eyes, her spotty skin, all of it,” Mafalda confided viciously.</p><p>Ginny couldn’t help but chance a laugh.</p><p>“She pined after Ajax as if he was every member of Take That rolled into one, but he didn’t notice until she started her ‘routine’; of course, that doesn’t bode well for you, cuz,” Mafalda said.</p><p>“Why?” Ginny asked.</p><p>“To Philomena Fotheringhay’s mind, you blatantly tried to make a play for the one thing she always wanted, her greatest victory, and the thing she is most desperate to keep,” Mafalda said. </p><p>“So, what’s she saying?” Ginny asked urgently. </p><p>“Well…she and Ajax are saying that you sort of…threw yourself at him, at Sluggy’s party. That you…pounced him. Ergo, ‘Pounce’ is becoming a bit of an epithet for you, you could say,” Mafalda said.<br/>
Ginny felt like the floor was opening up under her.<br/>
“I didn’t ‘pounce’ anybody! I was dancing by my bloody self,  at that party, thank you very much! Harry didn’t ask me, he stood there like a bump on a log, paying more attention to the food! He danced with Hermione, and I…just…then Ajax came up to me, and he was nice, and funny, and fit, and I thought he liked me!” Ginny said.</p><p>“Oh, don’t start up a strop,” Mafalda said coldly. “Now isn’t the time to get emotional. You can’t put feathers back into a pillow that’s been stabbed, but what you can do is fight fire with fire. I just gave you some valuable information about our Mena-now, what are you going to do with it?”</p><p>“What am I supposed to do, break her wand?” Ginny snapped.</p><p>“No, Miss Clever. The correct answer, the Slytherin answer, would be to make friends with some Ravenclaws who hate her as much as you do,” Mafalda said. “maybe they could be of some use.”</p><p>Ginny thought of how Hermione had said that Philomena was on the Ravenclaw Prefects’ radar-she was known to be a bully, but they hadn’t been able to prove anything on her. </p><p>“I don’t need revenge. Its not worth it,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Ginevra, this isn’t going away. Its one thing to be called poor, or a blood-traitor or any of that, but it’s a different league to be called a slut, or a homewrecker. Especially the last, other girls aren’t likely to have much sympathy for,” Mafalda warned. “You need to get the better of Philomena, now, make it mano e mano, something people will have to take a second, have a think, and  weigh her side and yours’ on, rather than a sympathy party with her as the birthday girl. No one can spin sympathy into alliances like her, trust me. She’s in my year, I know her tricks.”<br/>
“I’ve seen worse,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Hmph. Have it your way, but she’s a coward, and do you know what cowards do when they hate someone?” Mafalda said.<br/>
“Well, not much, I suppose, being cowards,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Wrong. They run their mouths until someone bigger and braver hates you enough to do something about you for their own reasons. Any girl in this castle who hears Philomena’s sour grapes and has ever lost a bloke to a homewrecking slut will want a go at you. And the Bat Bogey Hex won’t get every job done, Skinny-Ginny,” Mafalda said.<br/>
Her use of Ginny’s childhood nickname was meant to soften the blunt truth, but Ginny felt winded by her use of the words, ‘homewrecking slut’.<br/>
“What, you think that of me, too?” Ginny asked earnestly.<br/>
“I don’t care who you try it on with. Why shouldn’t girls have fun? But, most people don’t see it that way, Gin,” Mafalda said. “the way girls will see it, if you went for Ajax and didn’t care, you’d break up their relationship, too. Its self-preservation to hate you, nothing personal.”</p><p>“Nothing personal. Oh, what a relief!” Ginny said sarcastically, then sighed in frustration. “This has to stop!”<br/>
“It’ll run its course. Let it. I suggest doing boring and saintly things. Join Gobstones Club,” Mafalda said, and walked back to the Great Hall, leaving Ginny standing alone. </p><p>Deep down, Ginny knew that Mafalda had meant it, she really didn’t care one way or the other about Ginny’s love life, which wasn’t the same thing as saying she didn’t think Ginny was a homewrecker, but at least it wasn’t condemnation. However, her words had left a heavy miasma in the air, and Ginny walked back into the Great Hall feeling as if someone had thrown a shroud over her.</p><p>This had to end. She glanced at Eloise, and her own empty seat at the Gryffindor table, but walked to Ravenclaw, instead.</p><p>“Ginevra, how is your aura?” Luna asked.</p><p>“Not now, Luna,” Ginny said distractedly, and was vaguely aware of Cho looking at her with concern, too.</p><p>Ginny ignored her friends and stood behind Philomena Fotheringhay’s perfectly glossy chestnut brown hair. She turned  around with a practiced swish of her hair, and faced Ginny with her deep blue eyes. Wait…blue eyes. Ginny remembered they had been opalescent gray when Philomena first called her a slut…and the day she went up to Ajax about Dueling Club, thinking Philomena was just his friend, they were hazel. She really did glamour charm her appearance! Ginny had read about singers and actresses who did that in her mum’s ‘Witch Weekly’ magazines, but facing a girl close to her own age whose appearance was magically constructed was a bit creepy.</p><p>“What do you want, Weasel?” Philomena asked sharply.</p><p>“She’s addicted, mate! She’s following you around, begging for more!” A seventh year boy chortled, and nudged Ajax in the ribs. For his part, he looked terrified, eyeing Philomena as if begging for forgiveness, and Ginny as if begging for her to cease and desist. </p><p>‘Spineless,’ Ginny thought, but the thought hardly comforted her as Ajax and Philomena’s crowd burst into laughter, laughing loudly and deeply at her. </p><p>“Make this stop. Your bimbo friends, and their lies, and their harassment,” Ginny said firmly.</p><p>Philomena  took on a prim and blameless expression.</p><p>“What lies? Ajax told me everything. The way you put your hands all over him at the party, threw yourself on top of him at the lake, and followed him all about the school, putting your hands all over him, making passes at him…I saw it for myself when you came up to us, acting as if you had touched him a thousand times,” she said. </p><p>“Just leave us alone,” Ajax said, firmly, and nastily. </p><p>It hurt more than Ginny thought it could. He was the boy who had run his fingers through her hair, staring deeply into her eyes, whispering her proper name, making it sound more beautiful than ever before, not like the name of a cheap perfume or a disco singer with one hit to her name, but  making it sound mature and beautiful…The smiles he had given her may as well never have happened, he was looking right through her with disgust.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny walked away, knowing she couldn’t hex Ajax, Philomena and their friends in full view of the faculty table, nor was confronting them going to make the innuendo campaign stop. She clenched her fists, fighting tears, as she walked back to the Gryffindor table…but everyone rose from their tables. Breakfast was over, and she drifted in the throng of black robed students headed to classes. She felt cold and shivered, shaking with anger.</p><p> </p><p>Harry and Hermione took their places at a station in Slughorn’s Potions classroom. Once again, Slughorn merrily proclaimed, “Books away!” Harry flinched. Hermione threw him a self-satisfied smirk.</p><p>“I must give my successor some credit! In my rather brief absence from Hogwarts, he has somewhat risen the standard of the bar for N.E.W.T preparation! You are a remarkably talented bunch of six years, so I think we can go a bit off book, from time to time,” Slughorn said merrily. </p><p>“Fifteen years is brief to him?” Harry whispered to Ron.</p><p>“To him, sure-he’s ancient,” Ron said. </p><p>They both laughed, and Hermione responded, “Laugh now, cry later.”</p><p>“I’m sure it won’t be too hard,” Ron said.</p><p>Harry glanced longingly at Advanced Potions. He had no sanguine hopes of surviving this assignment without the Prince. And, he couldn’t expect much help from Hermione, who was stung that he would openly cheat in front of her for all these weeks. He knew her: she would let him flounder to teach him a lesson. </p><p>“Shrinking Potion!” Slughorn announced. “there are times when it would be advantageous to be only a few centimeters high, thought the hazards are many: house cats, for one!”</p><p>The class laughed. Even though Slughorn’s jokes were corny, it was a relief to have such a nice teacher after Snape, and like a country that’s lived in the grips of a dictator who is now toppled they were flooding the streets and dancing to no music, at all.</p><p>“So, you will prepare the potion, administer it to a living subject-I mean, lab partner, and then lovingly deposit them into the tea cups beside you, no harm done! I’ve already prepared the antidote, enough for each participant, so, you’re quite welcome that you aren’t doing double work preparing both!” Slughorn said.</p><p>Harry flipped through the book, but Slughorn was quite right, Shrinking Potion was not on the standard year six curriculum.</p><p>“I had you in mind for this one, m’boy!” Slughorn said, looking at Harry with a wide smile.</p><p>“Oh?” Harry said, abandoning the book and feigning interest.</p><p>“Oh, yes! Aurors often avail themselves of Shrinking Potion, for matters of reconnaissance! Minerva informs me that its your cherished ambition to be an Auror,” Slughorn said.</p><p>“Yes, sir,” Harry thought.</p><p>He remembered what Hermione had said: maybe people who actually had the skills should be Aurors, not people who had to ‘fake it till they make it.’ Harry understood, now-the floundering and desperate way he felt in Potions class was the opposite of the way he felt in dangerous situations, or in Defense Against the Dark Arts. But, being an Auror wasn’t all Defense Against the Dark Arts. Potions was his weakest subject, always had been, and that was unlikely to change without cheat codes…but, he couldn’t use cheat codes in the field fighting dark wizards.</p><p>If being an Auror wasn’t for him, what was? </p><p>“Professor…I’m feeling a bit off…what did you use in that antidote? Was there algae?” Hermione said, fanning herself, her eyes looking unfocused.</p><p>“Hermione, are you okay?” Ron said, rushing over to her side.</p><p>“Algae? Yes! Why, my dear girl, are you allergic?” Slughorn asked.</p><p>“Yes, terribly,” Hermione said, before fainting.</p><p>At least, it was a very convincing job of pretending to faint. Harry caught her wink at Ron as they carried her to the hospital wing.</p><p>“Potion fumes,” Madam Pomfrey complained when they brought her in. “Happens all the time,” she continued, waving smelling salts under Hermione’s nose after Ron and Hermione lay her down on a recovery cot.</p><p>When Hermione ‘came round,’ Madam Pomfrey left them to attend to another matter, and Harry said, “Thanks, Hermione.”</p><p>“Well, I couldn’t let you make a bloody fool of yourself, or poison someone,” Hermione said. “are you done with that bloody book, now?”</p><p>Harry sighed. “Suppose I have to be. I mean, I don’t want your sacrifice to be in vain.”</p><p>“Why don’t you just ask Slughorn about your mum?” Ron asked. </p><p>“What?” Harry asked.</p><p>“He’s always talking about her. Just ask what she was like, and all. That’ll probably get you where you want to be with him. It’s a personal connection you’re after, right? He’s like that bloke Gatsby from that book you sent me over the summer, Hermione: he invites a lot of people to his parties, but its not personal,” Ron said.</p><p>Hermione sat up. She looked at Ron, and her eyes lit up. “You read it? ‘The Great Gatsby’?”</p><p>“I read all the books you send me,” Ron said, as if that should be obvious.</p><p>“You trade books, over the summer?” Harry asked.</p><p>“Well, novels. You’re…more the nonfiction sort, Harry,” Hermione said.</p><p>Harry hadn’t thought of it that way. Certainly, he was aware of fairy tales and the names of classic novels for young people, like the Chronicles of Narnia, but the Dursleys had strictly enforced their ‘no magic or anything like magic’ policy when it came to fiction. This had, Harry realized, led to him reading more informational things, when he read at all. There was only so much downtime in between classes, meals ,Quidditch, and trying not to be killed at least once every year. </p><p>“I had no idea you two had some sort of book club,” Harry said.</p><p>“I had to write to her about something. ‘De-gnomed the garden today, again’ or ‘Fred and George Transfigured my toothbrush into an ink pen and it burst in my mouth, dyed my teeth blue, again’ isn’t a very good letter, is it?” Ron said. </p><p>Harry shrugged. The twins’ pranks, the magical garden, plus Quidditch and Mrs. Weasley’s food were everything Harry loved about holidays there. Ron always seemed to want something more than the life he had. Not in a blindly ambitious way, like his elder brother Percy…but, in a wistfully, restlessly dissatisfied way that Harry couldn’t exactly relate to. </p><p>“Looks like you’ve got an afternoon off,” Ron commented. “how are you going to spend it? And if you say ‘studying’…”</p><p>“And if I do?” Hermione said, a challenge lighting her brown eyes with stars.</p><p>Ron laughed. “It would just be typical, that’s all.”</p><p> </p><p>Hermione smiled with a begrudging air, and said, “Actually, I was thinking of joining Mindfulness Club, but I’m reading up on Zen meditation so that I’ll be prepared. This is the perfect time and venue to practice.”</p><p>“You’re planning…and preparing…and studying independently, how to relax? A new low, Hermione,” Ron said, bemusedly. </p><p>She rolled her eyes, but said, “I’ll show you. Take a deep breath, exhale, and clear your mind.” Ron did so, and followed Hermione’s lead. </p><p>Harry just watched. He knew that he wasn’t going to join the club, as he’d already told Cho, and he was looking at Ron and Hermione in a new light. He had grown sick of their bickering, aware that something romantic lay beneath it, but scared that if they did get together, they’d break up after one of their nuclear fights and their friendship would be broken, leaving him in the middle or totally on the outs. Now, he saw that their fighting had softened to banter, and they both seemed vivified by their communication. They both had more color in their faces and lights in their eyes, when they talked. Harry envied them, that it was so easy for them to fall in rhythm, that they made each other so happy, that they had each other. He felt a little lost, like when they had gone off to the Prefects’ car on the train in fifth year. He had stood in the aisle gormlessly gawping until Ginny came up to them, found a compartment, and got a conversation going with him, Luna, and Neville. It had felt so easy, and right, to follow her lead.</p><p>But, he had to admit, they hadn’t been getting on very well. They had a bright moment that seemed to contain days’ worth of happiness, then a stormy moment, like their disagreements over Quidditch, or Ginny informing Harry that she didn’t want him to kiss her again. He was sure that she was going to apologize or want to hash out that situation when she asked him to walk to the abandoned chapel, but he just wanted to let it go. He realized that if they went back to what they were, then that wasn’t much. He had noticed too late that she wasn’t just a little girl, and they had only just started to feel like friends. Now, it sometimes felt as if it was too awkward between them to even be almost-friends, again. </p><p>After some time had passed, Harry figured he’d better head back to Slughorn’s and collect his things. He reached the Potions classroom just as class was breaking up, and he was walking against the grain of the students heading out. </p><p>“Mr. Potter!” Slughorn hailed him. He was holding Harry’s Potions book. Clearly, he had perused it and found the Prince’s cheat codes, and deduced the rest. </p><p>“Care to explain?” Slughorn said, a brittle edge to his usually mirthful tone. No professor, even the former head of Slytherin house, liked a cheater in their class.</p><p>“Sir…I…found it. I didn’t have a Potions book, because I didn’t think I’d be allowed to take Potions, and….it was just a spare copy, lying around, I….” Harry began, faltering, feeling more and more humiliated as he spoke, but he knew that he only had himself to blame. It was himself, that he was angry with.<br/>
“And,” Slughorn finished, “you have been using it all term to skate by in Potions. Is that right, Mr. Potter?”</p><p>When Hermione said it, it had been easy to refute, like her other assertions that they should not stay up too late, study more, do their homework themselves, floss, etc. He had ignored her, made excuses, so determined to be an Auror, and get a N.E.W.T potions grad that his goal required, and get close to Slughorn as a way to fulfill Dumbledore’s wishes.</p><p>Harry sighed. “Yes, sir,” he admitted. “I’d be poxy at Potions, otherwise. Snape is right, I’ve got no talent. I…I didn’t know anything about magic, or being a wizard, until Hagrid found me. He told me that I’m a wizard. I didn’t know anything. I still feel…like, every day, I’m…catching up. I’m…not who everyone thinks I am.”</p><p>Slughorn gave him a soft, kindly look. “Harry, you’re not a fraud. Everyone cuts a corner, now and then. And, you’re quite right, growing up in ignorance of our world can put you a little behind the rest…now, don’t take me wrong, I don’t think it’s a handicap one can’t overcome, with honest effort. Your mother came from similar circumstances, didn’t  she? But she was the best student in her year, out of any house, a Prefect, Head Girl, all well deserved! Work hard, and don’t count yourself out, it will all sort out!”</p><p>He gave Harry a friendly clap on the shoulder. He hadn’t realized what a dark cloud the Prince had been: it was cheating, and Harry felt guilty about that now that he had been found out, and was honest, and it had caused tension with him and Hermione that he wasn’t accustomed to.</p><p>“Thank you, Sir,” Harry said. </p><p>Slughorn smiled. “Well, I shall be taking this book out of circulation. Farewell to the Half-Blood Prince, whoever he was!” he said.</p><p>“You’ve never heard that name before, sir?” Harry asked.</p><p>“I should think not-who would go around calling themselves that?” Slughorn chortled.</p><p>“I thought maybe it had something to do with Tom Riddle. Maybe a name he had tried out before Lord Voldemort, or something,” Harry said.</p><p>“No, no, I’m sure that its not…that its nothing like that, at all! No, no, not at all,” Slughorn insisted, and made a great show of tossing the book in the trash, laughing as if to reassure Harry that nothing was wrong, but his laughter was false, desperate, and a bit frantic.</p><p>“Well, I’m sure you’re right, sir,” Harry said, and added, “I should get going.”</p><p>He left the classroom feeling as if he had touched a nerve. What was it that Slughorn didn’t want him to know? It was something, he was sure, to do with Voldemort.</p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Chapter 20</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Harry starts to figure out all is not as it seems between Ginny and Ajax; Ginny keeps her head above water</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I cheated on my NaNoWriMo project to write this chapter, lol! We have two Quidditch games, one Dueling Club meeting, one Slug Club party, and one Christmas ball to go before the end of the story, and of course, more Philomena, and Tiffany makes her appearance, as well.. Stay tuned!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Pounce. It was just a stupid word, it just meant ‘jump’. But, as if a curse had been placed, because Philomena Fotheringhay said so it came to mean that Ginny was a slag, a slut, nasty, shameless, enemy of solid and happy relationships, lurer of vulnerable young men to dark corners where she threw herself at them, disregarding the existence of their loyal girlfriends. In the corridors, students mouthed it at her, shouted it at her, laughed at the sight of her or made a big show of trying to contain their laughter, but they were due to burst from the effort, it was simply too hilariously serendipitous to find themselves in the midst of Pounce.<br/>It made O.W.L. studying difficult-she had to abandon many a comfy armchair in the library  because she could hear titters of cruel laughter over her shoulder, or was confronted by girls informing her that she should be ashamed of herself. What was the use of saying, “I didn’t do it!” She was beginning to be shaky on that point, herself. If she hadn’t known about Philomena, was she indeed innocent of any wrongdoing? Or did culpability lie in the result, irrespective of blundering into it innocently? She really had fooled around with another girl’s boyfriend, and it was different than the aftermath of the Chamber of Secrets: she could not lay  any portion of blame for her actions on the darkest wizard of the 20th century. She was the one who had been stupid enough to be taken in by Ajax’s Prince William-esque good looks, and to be so sensually carried away by his kisses and touch that she didn’t notice he had never acknowledged her publicly.<br/>Studying outside was also not an option, as the rainy Scottish Highlands autumn settled in. That left the common room, where she was afraid that someone would say ‘Pounce’ there, and she would lose all pleasure and pride in being a Gryffindor. She studied in her room, and at least her efforts were bearing fruit: Professor Flitwick was pleased that her Charms grade had improved so markedly.<br/>She still had Quidditch, at least. She got into fewer fights with Peakes, afraid that he had heard Philomena’s bile and would call her ‘Pounce,’ slut, or slag in one of their rows. The task of training Demelza absorbed her, and she, Demelza, and Katie developed a good rhythm, which pleased Harry. As the nasty weather set in, he proved not to be interested in emulating the zealot, the daredevil, the legend, Wood, who had put his team through their paces in driving rain, and mud. Harry looked up, peered into the clouds penetratingly as if his emerald green eyes see through the skin of the clouds and gauge how close they were to bursting, and then he’d announce,<br/>“That’s all we can do, today! Let’s head in.”<br/>Ginny really didn’t mind the rain. She liked feeling it cool and wet on her face, and liked trudging through the splashing mud. But, of course, when practice was over, they had to comply. She had, at least, a long bath to look forward to, and the prospect of brewing some of her mother’s homemade honeysuckle tea up in her room while studying History of Magic. It was secretly her favourite subject; she wouldn’t dare contest when a group of her peers began bemoaning how boring it was, but Ginny couldn’t see what could be boring about goblin wars and witch hunts. <br/>“Gin!” Harry hailed her. <br/>Her heart beat almost painfully fast, but she hid that she was anything but pleased to see him. A normal pleased, not the wild, frantic, painful joy she felt when he came close, that she hid with all her internal might.<br/>“Great practice,” she said…and then wondered if that was banal.<br/>“Thanks,” Harry said, and actually smiled.<br/> A real smile, not the stranger’s mask he put on when forcing himself to laugh or seem interested in her mother’s dinner table prattle. Was he going to ask her for a private talk? Maybe up in the owlery, or the astronomy tower? Ginny’s heart shook like a bell in its tower, ringing with hope. <br/>“Demelza’s really coming along, isn’t she?” he said.<br/>“She’s doing great. She’s good at passing and shooting, so…yeah, its great when a Chaser can do both, you know?” Ginny said. Now, she knew that one was banal. She was more boring than Eloise, she was sure.<br/>“For definite, yeah,” Harry agreed. “You three are really perfecting that basketball maneuver, where one person guards, one person shoots, the other person catches the ball when the Keeper returns it and tries to send it back. In fact, I think you’re becoming known for it.”<br/>“Me?” Ginny asked.<br/>She wanted to do a victory dance-Harry was close to Professor Slughorn, he must have spoken of introducing her to Gwenog Jones, the Harpies captain! Maybe she could skip her last year of school, and go straight to the Harpies training camp. She didn’t mind being on the second string or the practice squad, everyone had to start somewhere, she would work her way to the first string roster in five years…two years…five? Was five more reasonable? Harry was looking at her with warmth and pride, his green eyes smolderingly bright, shining through the rain.<br/>“Yeah-isn’t that why they call you ‘Pounce’?” Harry asked. <br/>His voice and facial expression were so jocular, amiable, sweet and warm…if it was anyone else, she would think they were luring her in with kindness as a bait, to make the dig hurt worse: as if she was too stupid to wake up every day remembering that she was a pariah, that her hope for a friend or even just a moment of kindness was audacious and ill-advised.<br/>But, this was Harry…who had played Exploding Snap with her in front of everyone, who must have known that as he was the most famous, richest boy in school, that the story of how he had saved the school from her Basilisk was circulating and that if he showed her kindness, believed her, and forgave her, then everyone else would take his lead and follow suit. Harry, who’d asked her to the Yule Ball even though she was a third year…well, Ron had asked her to go with Harry, but who knew that he hadn’t been too shy to do it, himself, and asked Ron to speak for him…but, she couldn’t break her promise to Neville, and leave him feeling the way she had felt so often: adrift, alone, and shut out of paradise. <br/>She looked into Harry’s eyes. He wasn’t ridiculing her, she was sure.<br/>“Where did you hear that from?” She asked. <br/>“Your Ravenclaw friends, that’s what they’ve been calling you, isn’t it? I had no idea they were so at odds with Hufflepuff. They really seem to want to see them flattened,” Harry said.<br/>Quidditch…he thought ‘Pounce’ was a Quidditch nickname…something to do with her skill as a Chaser…and that the people who had been coming up to her insulting her were her friends? Again, if it was anyone else, Ginny would think this was a long game, setting her up for a false sense of security when the guillotine fell. <br/>What could she do? Tell him, ‘No, actually, they call me Pounce because rumor has it I force myself on other girls’ boyfriends, and those people aren’t my  friends, they hate me’? She wanted to be the version of herself that Harry seemed to believe existed: the renowned Chaser known all throughout the school, that people came up to the week before the match to wish good luck or cheer on, the girl with loads of friends and a sporty nickname…<br/>“Must go back to the Founders, I guess,” Ginny said. “Maybe Helga Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw wore the same gown to a party one Christmas, and both swore a vendetta.”<br/>Harry actually laughed. “That must be it. Well, I think we’re looking good. Really natural; you and Katie and Demelza work brilliantly together. On Saturday, just go for it. Pounce!”<br/>Ginny feigned being flattered. She faked a laugh, and said, “Yeah, we’ll pounce!” She quickly added, “I’d better hurry to the shower, so I can hit the library before it closes.”<br/>She hurried up the last stretch of the hill up to the castle. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harry replayed his conversation with Ginny in his head throughout his post-practice shower, as he dressed for the evening, and even when he was in the common room abusing his study hour before dinner to watch “The Taste Test”, a musical program, with Ron and Lavender. He barely heard the Weird Sisters’ new single, as he continued to match his words with the expressions on Ginny’s face. She had seemed to be in the grips of barely concealed horror when he brought up her Ravenclaw friends. Had they spoken of him, was she embarrassed of him, now?<br/>Was his reputation amongst Ravenclaws low because of his breakup with Cho? They were on speaking terms, now, but maybe she had said unkind, indiscreet things in the immediate aftermath of their disagreement over Hermione and Marietta. Then, there was Marietta herself, who had every reason to hold a grudge after the D.A. Was Ginny uncomfortable talking to him, because of her Ravenclaw friends’ dislike of him? He thought of all the times she had defended and helped him, even encouraged him…but, Cornelius Fudge and Ginny’s own brother, Percy, were perfectly nice until they, too, had decided that Harry was a liability…<br/>A small, persistent, strong voice within said, ‘Ginny isn’t like that!’<br/> That voice was sure, even though it had no substantive evidence…what was a singing valentine and yearning looks in a blushing face when they were just children? He couldn’t expect her to fancy him even now, when they were nearly adults. It wasn’t upon the past that he based his hope that Ginny still cared…though things had been tense, awkward, and she had another boyfriend, now, Harry was sure that she still believed in him. He wasn’t sure what form he wanted that to take…<br/>He was finally broken from his reverie by a third-year falling over an ottoman. He and his friend, whose hand was extended in a handshake, laughed with satisfaction.<br/>“That is enough! Oliver Pidgeon! Phillip Almond! Was that a hand-zapper?” Hermione said, getting out of her chair and stomping over to the scene of the crime.<br/>Oliver, the boy with the hand-zapper in his palm, froze in fear; Philip, who had fallen over on impact, squeaked out a, “Yes…Hermione.”<br/>“And, you felt it was appropriate to try out in full view of a Prefect?” she demanded.<br/>“Er…I didn’t see you,” Philip mumbled, and Ron laughed. <br/>“He’s got a point,” Ron said to Harry, who laughed.<br/>“Give me that Hand-Zapper, and if I see it again, I’ll take points,” Hermione said. <br/>“You’re not taking any points?” Philip said hopefully. <br/>“No, because you’re going to bed early, straight after dinnertime,” Hermione said sternly. The boys forlornly handed her the hand-zapper. “Now, go get ready for dinner!” she added.<br/> Harry thought Hermione sounded very Mum-ly. Not in a bad way…just as if she would be a good Mum, one day. She stormily walked over to the couch where Ron, Lavender, and Harry sat, and sat on the other side of Harry. Lavender shot her a look, but she was utterly insensible of it, as she told Harry,<br/>“Those aren’t Zonko’s. I’m sure they’re Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes!”<br/>This got Ron’s attention, and he said, “No way, Filch banned them at the beginning of the new term, there’s no way.”<br/>“I don’t know how, but students are getting in your brothers’ products, I know it!” Hermione insisted. “But, I’m well aware that I can’t prove it…so, for the nonce, I’m going to request to McGonagall that Hogwarts students be banned until further notice from Zonko’s.”<br/>“What? Hermione, over one hand-zapper? Come on!” Ron said. “Who are you, Umbridge?”<br/>Hermione rolled her eyes, and said, “Think: if we ban the students from Zonko’s, but products still flow in on an uptick, then we can ascertain for certain if the products are coming from London, rather than Hogsmeade.”<br/>Ron looked clearly impressed-he was a chess player, after all, and could appreciate a well executed maneuver: it was life when it was spontaneous and vague that Ron seemed to be perplexed and stressed out by. He was fine with settings that never changed, like his home, characters that were fixed and easy to know in predictable nuance, like those of his family, and things he knew osmotically through being born and raised in the small, insular culture of the Wizarding World-but, anything mercurial and subjective flummoxed him<br/>Hermione smiled, and folded her arms in a gesture of ‘Well, how do you like that?’ She seemed generally pleased with herself, and as if on cue, Ron said,<br/>“That’s brilliant, Hermione!” <br/>Once again, Harry envied them for the bond they were barely sensible that they enjoyed.  Study hour passed, and the Gryffindor students went down to dinner. Harry scanned the mass of black-robed students descending down the stairs like a murder of crows for Ginny’s bright, fiery hair, and expected to see her surrounded by Ravenclaws, escorted by the tall, handsome, blonde Ajax Biggerstaff…perhaps they would be holding hands, or his arm would be easily resting around her waist like at Slughorn’s party.<br/>He caught sight of Ajax, first…and he was not with Ginny, but a slender, pretty, but rather aloof looking girl with lustrous brown hair, who was gazing up at him in adoration as he told an involved story in a loud voice. Harry got the feeling, by his gesticulating hands, that Ajax was the sort of guy who loved being the center of attention, and wasn’t fussed about exaggerating, instigating, or repeating himself to earn the spotlight. <br/>“Who’s that girl, with Ginny’s boyfriend?” Harry asked Hermione.<br/>“Boyfriend?” Hermione spluttered, turning to him in shock. Harry gathered that he had gotten something backwards….</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
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<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Chapter 21</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Mafalda shares her suspicions; Philomena strikes at the Gryffindor v. Hufflepuff match; Harry learns the meaning of 'Pounce'; McGonagall counsels Ginny</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The ending score of the match is Gryffindor 160 because Harry caught the Snitch (150 points), and Ginny made a goal (10 points).</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>To the chagrin, perhaps, of Slytherin students, excluding Draco Malfoy, looking for extra cauldrons from the Room of Direst Need, the Room of Requirement was revived for Defense lessons, this time with the sanction of the Hogwarts faculty in the guise of Dueling Club. Dean and Hermione made a brief speech about the purpose of the lessons, and the necessity to know how to defend one’s self. Then, everyone paired off to practice countering Levicorpus with Expelliarmus. A burst of laughter and a bump on the floor let everyone know when someone had been released from levitation with Liberacorpus. Harry paired with Ron, Hermione with Dean, Seamus with Neville, and Ginny with Eloise Midgen, who seemed to be her de facto best friend, these days. Cho and Senara Nancarrow, one of the Chasers on the Ravenclaw team, were paired off, and Luna was partnered with Colin Creevey. However, Cho and Senara were the only Ravenclaws present: Ginny had recruited many members of the D.A. from amongst her then-boyfriend Michael’s Ravenclaw friends, but neither Ajax or any of his seventh year friends were present. He found that curious, and wondered if there was a correlation between that and Ajax walking with the brunette girl. Had they broken up, already?<br/>
Harry told himself he wasn’t feeling either optimistic, or cheerful about that prospect.<br/>
“Pay attention! Or you’ll get us killed when we’re Aurors,” Ron joked.<br/>
Harry laughed. He felt encouraged every time Ron brought up their future as Aurors, as he increasingly did as their sixth year was wearing on, in earnest.<br/>
“Do you really think we can get in?” Harry asked.<br/>
“What? Sure! Why not?” Ron asked.<br/>
“Potions,” Harry said emphatically.<br/>
“Mate, look, put two and two together: you need extra help with Potions, and Slughorn is just bursting to tell you stories about your mum. Why don’t you ask him to tutor you? He’ll blather on, the way old people do, and you can somehow worm that memory out of him that Dumbledore wants,” Ron said.<br/>
Once again, Ron’s chess player’s mind was at work, moving pieces around on squares. But, it wasn’t that simple. Harry felt a great reluctance to talk about his mother. He had yearned for some kind of confirmation that he was like his father, in some way, until he had seen the memory in Snape’s Pensieve, but he felt a strong, physical block when it came to talking about Lily.<br/>
“But, you don’t like it when he talks about your mum, do you?” Ron asked. “I’ve noticed, you get this look on your face…”<br/>
“What look?” Harry asked.<br/>
“I dunno how to describe it. But, it’s a sore subject, isn’t it?” Ron asked.<br/>
“No, I love talking about the murdered mother I never knew. Why don’t you pour some tea, cut some sponge cake, we can do it right now?” Harry said sarcastically.<br/>
Ron rolled his eyes, and made a huffy noise. “Fine. Sorry. Just trying to help,” he murmured.<br/>
Harry felt frustrated with himself. He realized he was being rather difficult: he’d pestered Ron and Hermione to help him deduce what Malfoy was doing, and here Ron was, coming up with ideas to help him get the memory out of Slughorn…and in return, Harry was, admittedly, being a prat. He felt frustrated, not with Ron, but himself, and things in general. He didn’t want this ask to be too big; he wanted to be worthy of the task that Dumbledore had set before him…and, maybe, just maybe, he would earn the headmaster’s trust in a permanent way. He wasn’t as convinced as Ron that Dumbledore planned to ask Harry to be his apprentice…but, with each October day the idea stayed with him and seemed to grow, though he barely acknowledged it for long and at length.<br/>
The Dueling Club meeting ended, and Dean thanked everyone for coming. Everyone looked pleased as they headed out, energized, cheerful, and confident…much as they did after D.A. meetings.<br/>
“Great meeting!” Harry told Dean, who smiled genuinely.<br/>
“Thanks,” Dean said warmly. “I’m thinking shield charms, next week. Any suggestions?”<br/>
“Um…you’ll need a jinx to counter. How about Rictumsempra, the Tickling Charm?” Harry said.<br/>
“Death Eaters don’t tickle,” Mafalda Prewett drawled, coming up to Harry and Dean.<br/>
“Well, no, but we can’t practice the Unforgiveables,” Harry said.<br/>
“Yeah. And, except for the Killing Curse, Shielding and Disarming should work all right on anything anyone throws at you,” Dean said.<br/>
She put her hands up in mocking surrender, with a cheeky look on her face, and said, “All right then, calm down. Just saying! We don’t want anyone thinking this is all there is.”<br/>
“Oh, don’t worry-no one will be getting that impression. We plan to be thorough. So, was that all?” Hermione said archly, as she approached the group.<br/>
Harry spied Ginny’s flaming ginger head approach the door beside Eloise’s mouse brown hair, and they both left the Room of Requirement.<br/>
“Almost. I just wanted to ask…did you notice any Slytherin students besides me, here tonight?” Mafalda said.<br/>
Hermione, Ron, and Dean looked shocked, and exchanged a troubled look. Harry felt like kicking himself: he had been so busy watching for Ravenclaws, trying to gauge Ajax’s and Ginny’s relationship status, that he hadn’t been scanning for Slytherins. He knew what Mafalda was getting at, though: why would Slytherins be training to fight Death Eaters if they were, in fact, training to be Death Eaters with Draco?<br/>
Harry took Mafalda aside, to a corner of the room, and said, “Look, you were the one who said Malfoy never had an original idea in his life. If he knows that the Dueling Club meets here, and Dean, Hermione, and maybe even Snape will be in and out of here setting things up, he’s not likely to use it for Death Eater recruitment, is he?”<br/>
“Oh, you think a ‘no vacancy’ sign puts an end to it, then?” Mafalda said.<br/>
“No! But I heard him talking about bringing an object in here. Something he was describing to Borgin as big and square. Something there’s already one of, here at Hogwarts. He didn’t say a word about roping other Slytherins into joining the Death Eaters,” Harry said.<br/>
“Why must they be mutually exclusive? I don’t know about any object, or what you heard on Knockturn Alley, but I do know that if Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle haven’t got Dark Marks on their arms, I’m Empress of the British Empire,” Mafalda said heatedly.<br/>
“And what do you want me to do about it, Your Imperial Highness?” Harry snapped.<br/>
He and Mafalda both stopped, aware that their voices were rising, they were both red in the face, and Hermione, Ron, and Dean were quite blatantly looking at them as their discussion rapidly became a disagreement.<br/>
“I get it. You need proof. I’ll get you that, don’t you worry,” Mafalda said coolly, and stalked off.<br/>
“Slytherins,” Hermione shuddered with distaste.<br/>
“Mum can’t stand her,” Ron confided.<br/>
“Ronald, you can’t mean it!” Hermione said, shocked.<br/>
“Its true. She always says she’s the worst-behaved child she ever knew, and its because of  all the sugar in Muggle foods: cereal, soda-pop, Pop Tarts, you name it. I bet its in the water supply!” Ron said.<br/>
Hermione folded her arms, and raised an eyebrow as she said skeptically, “Oh, and wizards never partake in sugar? The mere existence of Fortescue’s Ice Cream Parlor and Honeyduke’s Chocolate is evidence to the contrary.”<br/>
“Yeah, mate: wizards have got way more sweets than Muggles!” Dean said.<br/>
“Mafalda’s half-Muggle?” Harry asked.<br/>
“Yeah. Her mum’s a Muggle, and she married another Muggle after my uncle Gideon died. Too soon after, if you ask Mum, and she didn’t like the idea of Mafalda going to a Muggle school before Hogwarts. They can’t stand each other, Mum and Aunt Naomi,” Ron said.<br/>
A half-blood with a war hero on the side of the Order of the Phoenix for a father, in Slytherin? Harry couldn’t imagine how difficult life in Slytherin House must be for her.  No wonder she was determined to bring down Malfoy. Harry hoped Mafalda didn’t do anything too risky on her quest to get proof that he was recruiting Death Eaters…but, he also felt encouraged that she understood the stakes.  He wanted to tell her that he understood, too. </p><p> </p><p>Friday evening was clear enough for the setting sun to blaze like a cursed ruby in patches of pink sky, its light casting rose, violet, and tangerine on the scattered clouds above the Quidditch pitch. Ginny closed her eyes for second and absorbed the roar of the cheering crowd as the Gryffindor team took the pitch. It felt like the best life could be, like pure, true love. She felt a hard nudge in her side, and opened her eyes to see Katie, looking at her with a bemused, friendly look.<br/>
“Can’t fly like that, Weasley!” she joked.<br/>
Ginny laughed. Only on the Gryffindor Quidditch team did she feel immune from her reputation as ‘Pounce’, safely surrounded by people who had known her brothers, or at least loved Quidditch and wanted to win as much as she did. It was an oasis, a safe haven, from the dirty looks, rolling eyes, whispers, and confrontations in the corridors. The team gripped their brooms tight, lined up across from Hufflepuff, and waited for Madam Hooch to blow her whistle. When she did, they mounted their brooms and urged them up.<br/>
Ginny spotted the Quaffle, and went for it, electrified to get the first catch. She was guarding, not center or shooter, so her duty was truly to pass it to Katie or Demelza…but, she saw a path through Hufflepuff, if she gripped the ball tight and didn’t stop for anything. Ginny aimed her broom, and gunned it towards the outermost left Hufflepuff goal. It was a matter of seconds, but she could feel time on her side to make it to the goal that the Keeper, Whitbread, had left undefended: not many school sport Keepers, Ginny’s brother, Ron, included, were able to pull off the Figure Eight Loop, flying a circle around all three goals and guarding them all at once. Ginny had learned to play from reading about pro games in the newspaper, and closely watching matches at school. She knew that if she just flew fast enough, Whitbread didn’t have the pro-level skill to stop her.<br/>
She was right! When she got close enough to aim, Whitbread was scrambling to get to the goal just as her Quaffle was sailing in. Cheers erupted, and the commentator announced,<br/>
“Weasley scores, for Gryffindor! Well, no surprise there-handling balls, as we all know, is her specialty! Pounce, Weasley! Pounce!” Philomena Fotheringhay announced over the commentator’s microphone.<br/>
‘No…’ Ginny begged fate itself in her mind, ‘Not here, not Quidditch.’<br/>
Philomena had volunteered to do the commentary! A revolving door of students worked the commentary box since Lee Jordan graduated, and it was open to any comers, really. Philomena had taken advantage of that, to torment Ginny while she was in the air!<br/>
‘No, no…’ she thought again, as if trying to will what was happening not to be real, but her appeals were met with the crowd’s chant, ‘Pounce, Weasley, Pounce!’<br/>
Ginny’s head burst into pain, she felt feverish, and saw white, and snowblind spots, before her eyes as she flew towards the commentary box.</p><p> </p><p>Harry’s feelings veered wildly from triumph as he watched Ginny put the Quaffle in for the first ten point score of the match, to the cheers of the crowd all encouraging her, ‘Pounce! Pounce!’, to horror as he watched her dart like a bullet for the commentary box. She was ramming her broom again and again at the glass, and finally it burst, and the next thing Harry heard was a scream from the commentator. He recognized her as the girl Ajax had been walking with to dinner.<br/>
“Harry, do something!” Katie said, pulling up beside him.<br/>
Ginny was honestly throwing a Quidditch match to attack the girl who was seeing her boyfriend? Harry was well out of his depth what to do about that! But, he knew that they were down a Chaser, and the basketball inspired play that Dean and Katie had championed, which had worked so well against them in the hands of Ravenclaw, was out the window now with one Chaser down.<br/>
Do something, Katie had said. Well, Harry thought, maybe he was the Captain, but he was done with Ginny’s histrionics-kissing him then telling him she didn’t want or need him, vowing not to fight with Peakes and then doing it again, anyway. Seekers caught the Snitch-that’s what he was going to do. Harry spotted Imogen Appletree flying above the rest of the match, and darted to her airspace to see if the Snitch was in range. He saw it, a spot of gold glinting as if pointing the way to the lake, which looked as if it was on fire with the reflection of the sunset sky. Harry and Imogen reached out for the Snitch as if reaching for each other’s hands, and Harry felt secure and elated as his gloved hand closed around the winged, struggling, round ball.<br/>
He flew down, and Madam Hooch soon got the hint that the match was over. She blew her whistle, and shouted, “Gryffindor, 160! Hufflepuff, 0!”<br/>
Both teams descended. Harry and Whitbread, the Keeper and Captain, shook hands, and spotting Ron with his arm around Ginny leading her to the locker rooms, Harry went that way.<br/>
“I didn’t start this!” Ginny was protesting. “I made a stupid mistake, and I tried to apologize!”<br/>
Ron looked over, and noticed Harry. Harry hadn’t seen Ginny so upset in a long time: her face was red, her whiskey brown eyes shone with tears, and her hair was windblown and askew. He shook off the annoyance he had felt at her, and was concerned. Harry really didn’t want to go there, but he had to know, as Captain, what had happened today…especially if McGonagall wanted Ginny off the team. She took Gryffindor Quidditch quite seriously, seriously enough to buy Harry’s first broom, herself. She would be looking into this.<br/>
“Ginny…is this about Ajax Biggerstaff?” Harry asked.<br/>
This was the wrong move. Her face screwed up in fury, and she shouted with all her might, “SO YOU THINK I’M A SLUT, TOO?!”<br/>
Harry was shocked. “No! Of course not! Ron, what did you say to her?”<br/>
“Me?!” Ron spluttered.<br/>
“Its not Ron! Its everybody else, coming up to me, calling me a slag, and a slut, and ‘Pounce!’ She said it to the whole school!” Ginny said, uncharacteristically hysteric.<br/>
“You…don’t like being called ‘Pounce’?” Harry asked, dumbfounded.<br/>
“Would you?!” she snapped. “Oh, but no one ever calls blokes anything, do they? No one ever blames the bloke!”<br/>
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought people called you that because of how good you are. At Quidditch. You know, you steal the Quaffle, you pounce the other Chasers for it, and get the goal…” Harry said, his voice sounding weak and faltering, and he could tell from the look on Ron’s and Ginny’s faces how wrong he had been.<br/>
Ginny deflated a little, her first fury fading, but she still looked as redolently miserable as she had when she woke up in the Chamber of Secrets.<br/>
“No, Harry…God at birth, you’re sweet, but no…its got nothing to do with Quidditch,” she said, and with a sigh, continued, “I met Ajax at Slughorn’s Equinox party…and I thought we hit it off. I thought he liked me. All that next week, he’d find me and whisk me away to some private corner of the school, and we’d…snog. I reckoned we were dating! I thought he was my boyfriend…but I went up to him, and he acted like he didn’t know me…he was with all his friends, and her…Philomena Fotheringhay. They kissed and I figured it out: she’d been his girlfriend all along, and he was just messing about with me. He told me to leave him alone, he said that…that he thought we were both just scratching an itch. Ever since, Philomena and Ajax have been telling everyone I was the one who threw myself at him, that I pounced him. That’s why everyone’s been coming up to me, calling me Pounce.”<br/>
“I was afraid something like this would  happen,” Ron said gravely.<br/>
Ginny’s neck snapped round and her red hair flew over her shoulder as she turned her head to face Ron, and snapped, “Oh, like what?”<br/>
“You and blokes…you leap before you look, and go from 0 to 100 like that!” Ron said.<br/>
Ginny took out her wand, but Harry held her wrist to stop her from hexing her brother. She struggled out of Harry’s grip, but her elbow made contact with his nose. For the second time that year, Harry felt blood at his nose, and clasped his hands around his nose. Ginny looked at him, her eyes widened in horror.<br/>
“Harry!” she said apologetically, but before she could say more, the shadow of Professor McGonagall’s large hat fell on them all. She looked from Harry to Ginny, and said sternly,<br/>
“Come with me, Miss Weasley. You’ve done enough damage for today, ranging from school property to your fellow students. My office, now!”</p><p>After a long march in silence, back to the castle and up the stairs and corridors to McGonagall’s office, Ginny told her story as best she could. When she was done, McGonagall said,<br/>
“Miss Weasley, please do not think that I do not grasp the nuance of what you have told me. I shall speak with Professor Flitwick about the conduct of his students. However, this is not the first time I have received word, or witnessed myself, you escalating conflicts with violence,” McGonagall said.<br/>
Ginny felt as if she had drunk Shrinking Potion. She was shrinking with guilt, and looked down at her shoes.<br/>
“Magic is all too easy to use as a weapon, and with our singular gifts and abilities, wizards must also have an intimate grasp of self control-lest they become a danger to their fellows, and a threat to our entire world,” McGonagall said. “No matter how you are offended by someone’s conduct or words, you have no right whatsoever to attack them physically or magically, if they have not attacked you and you are not, indeed, fighting for your life! Do you understand?”<br/>
This was a far cry from being invited to Slughorn’s party for her Bat Bogey Hex, but there was no quibbling with Minerva McGonagall. Not only did she stay silent out of respect for the Head of Gryffindor House, but her words were genuinely sinking through.<br/>
“Professor…am I kicked off the team?” Ginny managed to mutter.<br/>
“Off the team? What? You’re the best Chaser Gryffindor has had since Thora Redwine, of course not!” McGonagall said.<br/>
Ginny looked up.<br/>
“Thora Redwine? From the Falmouth Falcons? Are you joking?” Ginny said.<br/>
“Am I generally known for my hilarity, Miss Weasley?” McGonagall countered, and continued, “Yes, you will be allowed to continue to play-Slytherin and Hufflepuff still need to settle their hanging match, and you still have Slytherin to play, to sort out that mess. But, if you attack another student, with your wand or your hands, you’ll have more to worry about than being off the Quidditch team!”<br/>
“Yes, ma’am,” Ginny agreed promptly.<br/>
“Now, I want you to keep up with Mindfulness Club, in Ravenclaw Tower. If I find that you’ve missed a meeting, you will be off the team, is that understood?” McGonagall said.<br/>
“Yes, ma’am,” Ginny said again, and with those terms met, the meeting was finally over. When McGonagall opened the door for Ginny, they were met with the sight of Hermione, Neville, Dean, and the whole Gryffindor Quidditch team waiting in the corridor.<br/>
“Gin, are you all right?” Ron asked.<br/>
Ginny could barely speak. She was, once again, near to tears, but this time, it was accompanied by a swelling warmth in her heart. </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Chapter 22</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Ginny opens up to Harry</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The song playing at the Gryffindor victory party is "Everyone Falls in Love Sometimes" by Tanto Metro and Devonte; listen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUwWlerjhjI"> here</a> .    With Harry Potter being set in the 90s, I had to include some classic reggae, like my parents used to play when I was growing up!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Professor, is everything all right?” Harry asked McGongall, who gave him a cross look.<br/>
“As you  can see, Potter, I’ve not tossed Miss Weasley down an Obliere, have I?” she responded.<br/>
“Is that, like, a toilet?” Peakes asked.<br/>
Her expression became yet more cross, and she said, “This is a very touching show of support, but no loitering outside my office! Hasn’t Gryffindor a victory to celebrate?” She waved her wand and added, “When you return to your common room, you’ll find ample provisions to do so. Off you pop!”<br/>
“What do you think is up there?” Katie asked.<br/>
Harry whispered, “It depends on McGonagall’s idea of a party, doesn’t it?”<br/>
Katie and Ron laughed. Ginny fell in step with the rest of the team. She looked numb, changed, as if a sword had pierced her heart.<br/>
“Gin, you okay?” Ron asked awkwardly. He was far more used to vexing his sister or defending himself from her sharp tongue than asking after her welfare.<br/>
“Yeah. She was quite nice about it all, really. But, I don’t want to talk about it,” Ginny said.<br/>
“I understand that. But, Ginny, if you were having problems, why didn’t you tell someone?” Katie asked. “How long has all this ‘Pounce’ stuff been going on?”<br/>
Ginny looked mortified, and snapped ferociously at Katie, “Don’t worry about it! I said I didn’t want to talk about it!”<br/>
Katie blinked. She looked surprised, and then hurt. “Fine. Yeah. Not as if we’re friends, or anything,” she said under her breath.<br/>
Demelza, the youngest of the three of them, who’d gotten used to relying on Ginny and Katie as her trainers, looked at Ginny with shock.<br/>
“You lot, go up to the party. Gin, come with me to the lake,” Harry said.</p><p>Ginny felt horrible for snapping at Katie, but she knew Harry must be even more disappointed in her. At every turn, she made him look bad in his first year as captain: rowing with Peakes, snapping at Katie, attacking Philomena. Why couldn’t she seem to control herself? She had returned to Hogwarts after the Chamber of Secrets, endured the justifiable trepidation of her peers, and their unwarranted cruelty, all with the same determination to just get through it. The months had peeled by, until September became June, and she had survived the year. Then her third year, then her fourth, and with the specter of Voldemort’s actual return, whether people believed it or not, they finally had something more heinous and frightening than Ginny and the basilisk to concern themselves with. Between dating Michael, being in the D.A., and finally being on the Quidditch team, her life started to look and feel normal.<br/>
So, why now? When she had survived much worse, why was it Philomena and Ajax that set her off and unbalanced her? She said nothing and looked ahead of her, facing the wind as she and Harry walked to the shores of the lake. It was becoming properly dark, but a little light still crept over the mountains, although the sun had slipped behind them. The sky was an amethystine purple, and the shadows of the trees were a rich, generous dark like good earth. A cool breeze ruffled them, and teased leaves to fall from the trees, drifting and catching the wind like flocks of small birds before they landed in pile on the ground, or on the lapping surface of the water.<br/>
“Gin…I hate it when people ask me when I’m okay. Because if someone has to ask, you’re obviously not okay, are you, usually?” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny laughed, and dared to look at him, into his eyes…as green as the fire upon which she cooked the basilisk from a hen’s egg, the very color of the most eldritch enchantments.<br/>
“I don’t like being mean to people. But, I am. Even McGonagall’s noticed…that I hex people, get into fights,” she said.<br/>
Harry shrugged. “So? Everyone does sometimes, don’t they?”<br/>
Ginny sighed miserably, and shook her head. “No…not like me. I just…go off, before I’ve meant to, and before I know it I’ve said something shitty, or hexed someone, or hurt someone somehow.”<br/>
Harry nodded, earnestly listening to her, and then he said, “I…was sort of like that too, last year.” He added ironically, “I don’t know if you noticed.”</p><p>Ginny smiled bemusedly, thinking of hearing his shouts ring from upstairs at 12 Grimmauld Place downstairs to the parlor. She and Sirius, who had been sitting in his favorite armchair and idly sipping brandy, had exchanged a bemused look, at the time, until he told her,<br/>
“Why don’t you go say hi?”<br/>
It felt strange, to Ginny, to remember someone who was now dead. As if he only existed, now, within her own mind. An echo….almost like Tom….Even though Sirius was, at his core, a generous, caring, nice man with a good sense of humor and fun at his best, Ginny felt the need to keep her feet firmly planted amongst the living, her eyes pointed at whatever light she could find. She focused on the scrim of light from the setting sun outlining the mountains.</p><p>“Yeah, I remember. But, you were afraid that you were being possessed by Voldemort, and you’d been attacked by Dementors, and the Ministry was charging you…what’s my excuse?” Ginny said.<br/>
“Just because we don’t all have the same problems doesn’t mean that we don’t all have problems. Even ghosts have problems,” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny laughed wryly, and said, “Oh, have they?”<br/>
“Sure. Hasn’t Ron ever told you about the Deathday party?” Harry asked.<br/>
Ginny shook her head, and this prompted Harry to tell her a story about him, Ron, and Hermione in their first year. By the end, Ginny was laughing.<br/>
“I had no idea that ghosts had parties! Or clubs! The Headless Hunt…Muggles have stories about things like that, hordes of headless horsemen, roving about on Halloween. D’you reckon its just Nick and his mates?” Ginny joked.<br/>
“Well, they weren’t his mates, not really. And not being able to get in, it really hurt him. I mean, it all seemed a bit silly and weird to us, but for him, its his life. Well, afterlife, rather? I don’t know, but you know what I mean,” Harry said.<br/>
“I think so, yeah: that our own problems are part of our own lives, so to us, no matter how big or small they are compared to someone else’s life, they’re important,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Yeah. You know, it doesn’t always have to be Voldemort to hurt,” Harry said. “Other things hurt, too.”</p><p>When he said that, the purple twilight sky was reflected behind him in the waters of the lake, and the shadows were the same color as his dark hair. Harry’s eyes were smolderingly dark, hungry for light and finding none…he was so beautiful, it hurt Ginny to look at him…and he was the same boy who had asked her to play Exploding Snap after the Chamber, still so kind…She was torn between crying and kissing him, but knew she could do neither.<br/>
“Katie was right, you know: you could have told us what was going on,” Harry said.<br/>
“It all happened so fast. I was just trying get through it,” Ginny said.<br/>
“You don’t have to get through things alone,” Harry said.<br/>
“Yeah, since when?” Ginny said. Harry looked guilty, and Ginny realized she had lashed out, yet again.<br/>
“We didn’t help you, after the Chamber. Is that it? I know that’s it. We had each other…but, you didn’t have anyone. Ginny, I didn’t know until you told me last year that you still thought about Tom Riddle, and the diary, and the Chamber. Dumbledore told me you would be fine,” Harry said plaintively.<br/>
“Harry, no! I’m not angry with you about that. I mean, I thought that we would be friends, after that….but I was still so nervous around you. When I tried to sit with you on the train, the next year, and Ron told me to go away…I was stupid, back then, I was scared to try again, to be friends,” Ginny said.<br/>
“We’re friends now, aren’t we?” Harry asked. </p><p>There was a slight pinch of desperation in his tone, and Ginny felt one of those keen and slightly painful moments of sharp need to comfort Harry, to make him understand how much she cared about him. There always seemed to be something in the way…the mere fact that he was Harry Potter, such a prodigiously powerful wizard that he had defeated Voldemort when he was a baby, the closest thing that Dumbledore had ever shown to choosing an heir, successor, or apprentice, and the boy that had saved her life…and, he had his own friends, was always embroiled in some secret mission that required sneaking all around the castle by dark, ending up in trouble, but saving the school and winning the house cup every year. What could she ever say to break the ice: ‘Do you know how awesome you are?’ or ‘What’s it like to be a legend, and have sexy lips and beautiful eyes and really nice on top of it all?’ Only when Harry was upset, emotional, even angry did he seem like someone she could get close to: Ron and Hermione may know all his secrets, but Ginny seemed to be the only one who saw the fear and pain in his eyes. Harry wasn’t really angry-he was scared. And she knew how that felt, and she knew what drove fear away: the truth, about the odds and the extent of what you’re afraid of.<br/>
This time, she was the one who had been a ball of emotion, lately, and only now, with Harry beside her in the dark, did she realize that she had been handling it alone when she didn’t have to.<br/>
Ginny looked into Harry’s eyes. She dared herself to, and was rewarded with an electric feeling up and down her back, along her skin, as if Harry’s eyes had a warm, magnetic force. </p><p>“Yeah…we’re friends,” she whispered.<br/>
“If I had known what ‘Pounce’ meant…I never would have said it. I thought it was to do with Quidditch, and I thought those Ravenclaws were your friends,” Harry said.<br/>
“My friends?” Ginny said skeptically.<br/>
“You always have so many people around you…I thought you had so many friends,” Harry said.<br/>
“Not everyone you talk to is a friend. That’s just how it is,” Ginny said. “Those were Philomena’s friends. Girls tend not to like homewreckers…she’s got everyone on her side because it just makes a girl angry, the idea of someone stealing someone else’s boyfriend. We work hard to land them, you know.”<br/>
Harry laughed a little, and said, “I hate to tell you, but you can’t make off with a bloke like slipping a Mars bar in your pocket in que at Tesco. Unless you Imperius Cursed Ajax, I’m pretty sure he was doing exactly what he wanted to do. But, he shouldn’t have looked at you like that…like someone he could use.”<br/>
“Its just how things are,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Well, its not how they should be,” Harry said ardently. “I thought all this time…that he was your boyfriend. You looked so happy with him at the Equinox party.”<br/>
“I thought he was my boyfriend, too,” Ginny said. “We had fun. But…it was just fun. He didn’t care.”<br/>
“What do you want me to do? I mean, is there anything I can do?” Harry asked.<br/>
Ginny wished this was something he could rescue her from…but, it simply wasn’t.<br/>
“I don’t think so. That’s what McGonagall was telling me…you can’t handle everything by fighting it,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Then, what do you do?” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny shrugged exaggeratedly, as if she was at a total loss. Harry laughed.<br/>
“Its getting dark. Come on, lets go see what McGonagall’s got for us in the common room,” Harry said. </p><p>Ginny felt calmer walking the empty corridors of Hogwarts beside Harry than she had in almost a fortnight. Her shoulders, neck, back, stomach, and arms lost the apprehension that at any moment, someone would pop round from a corner and snigger, whisper, yell, or walk fast and close to her, and insult her loudly to her face. Being a ‘man-stealer’ had made her hated in a different way than being a presumed Muggleborn killing Dark wizard with a basilisk at her command. The distance and innuendo other students had kept her at bay with had been from fear, which gave her a certain element of power in some situations. If she was presumed to be so dangerous and crazy, she could play it up a bit and back people off her case. But, being thought of as a man-stealing, homewrecking slag just made people disgusted at her. They didn’t stay away, they came too close, as if her crimes were so heinous, she had forfeited her right to personal space, privacy, or the common regard of not screaming at someone.<br/>
She realized that she wanted neither feeling. She just wanted to feel good, again-like when the wind kissed her face while she rode her broom, like when the generous sun had stoked her skin pink in the Egyptian summer on holiday with her family, like when she learned how to cast a Patronus in the D.A. </p><p>Ginny and Harry climbed the grand staircase to the Fat Lady’s portrait, and both delivered the password, ‘Folderol’, in unison. They climbed through the Portrait Hole separately. Harry didn’t gallantly try to help her through, but Ginny found that to be a relief. She was done with chivalry and sensual romance-maybe they were performances blokes put on because it was expected, and had nothing to do with their real feelings. It was better to have a friend, or at least that was what Ginny needed at the moment. </p><p> </p><p>Harry and Ginny walked into the common room and were greeted by the sound of boisterous laughter, chatter, and a reggae song proclaiming, “Everyone falls in love sometimes/ I don’t know about you/ but it ain’t a crime”.<br/>
Dean was at the turn-tables. Students that weren’t dancing were standing around, talking, and milling about eating huge, butter glazed, doughy pretzels, pepperoni pizza, or selecting iced butter and ginger beer from buckets of ice. It wasn’t exactly one of Slughorn’s legendary spreads, but Harry smiled widely: Gryffindor was victorious, and celebrating. He looked at Ginny, wishing to meet her eyes, and share the moment.<br/>
“I’m going to bed,” she announced, sounding exhausted, and went upstairs.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Chapter 23</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Luna gives Ginny some valuable advice after a faux pas</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I updated two new chapters, today, so don't forget to read Chapter 22, as well.</p>
<p>The song Harry hears at the party is "Linger," by the Cranberries. But, you probably knew that! R.I.P. Dolores. Listen <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6Kspj3OO0s">here</a></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harry feigned enthusiasm, and heartily returned the congratulations of his fellow Gryffindors on a saving catch of the Snitch. But, after the last visible tips of Ginny’s red hair had bounced upstairs, leaving empty space not lit by its flaming hue, he wasn’t sure what to do at the party. He ate pizza, he drank ginger beer. But, he didn’t know how to, or feel like, dancing, and everyone seemed to be so happy and engaged, and he just wasn’t feeling festive. Dean was an enthusiastic and skilled dj, and as the party wound down transitioned the music from American hip-hop and Jamaican dancehall reggae to reflective alternative rock. A dreamy slow song began. <br/>With an Irish accent, a woman sang, “I thought the world of you/I thought nothing could go wrong/ but I was wrong…/you know I’m such a fool for you/ you got me wrapped around your finger/ do you have to let it linger?” <br/>Ron and Lavender slow-danced, and for once their relationship didn’t seem like a parody or a travesty. They looked deeply into each other’s eyes, like two people who found enchantment in each other. Harry glanced around at Hermione, who looked embarrassed and miserable for a long stretch of minutes, then shook her head as if shaking off water. She was standing beside Dean, who was at the turn tables, and he put his arm around her shoulder. They shared a look of understanding. Neville was talking animatedly with Demelza, Katie was snogging another seventh year girl as if one of them was going off to war upon the morning, and Cormac McClaggen made a point to be snogging someone, although Harry could hardly see her face. <br/>Harry felt a sudden urge to get some homework done, and followed Ginny’s lead, going upstairs, too. He read a bit of his new Potions book. It was another secondhand copy, but aside from a few translucent bookworm eggs in its crevices, yellowed pages, and an earthy aged smell, it was pristine-no notes in the margins, no enigmatic signatures from students with grandiose monikers. Hermione would be pleased at its practicality, but Harry felt underwhelmed, and without the Prince’s shortcuts Potions had once again become a series of lists of measurements, mundane and easily muddled. <br/>Harry fell asleep, and he dreamed. He was by the lake with the dark haired girl again…sometimes her eyes were bright and dark like Cho’s, sometimes they were piercing gray like the Hollyhead Harpy, Granya Fishwick, but when he looked into the heart of them they were light brown and dancing with light, tiger’s eyes, just like Ginny. The sky was tangerine, the clouds were dusted pink with the setting sun’s light, and the lake reflected the orange-gold sky. He could hear music in the distance, “…you got me wrapped around your finger/do you have to let it linger…?” as he and the dream girl kissed. Her hair was as silky as fire in his fingers, and Harry touched her at liberty, reveling in her soft hair, soft body, warm skin, as they kissed as fiercely as the people at the party. Honey…he tasted wildflower honey, and with every taste of it, he wanted more…<br/>Harry woke up to morning light on his face,  feeling satiated, exhausted, and desolate. It was becoming familiar. He sighed. At least it was Saturday. No classes, so he looked forward to a leisurely bath in the Prefect’s bathroom, studying and TV, impromptu and informal Quidditch with Ron, Katie, and Cootes, or maybe even a player from another house team just drifting between the lawns and the pitch while the afternoon sun gave them some warmth and light, and, above all, a Hogsmeade visit. Harry sat up…and the first thing he saw was Ron counting a shining row of Galleons. Ron looked up as guiltily as if his mum had caught him sticking a finger in the Christmas pudding.<br/>“Ron? Where did you get that money?” Harry said.<br/>“Erm…my Aunt Tessie. She left me a small inheritance. You know…because I’m her favorite great-nephew,” he said quickly.<br/>“You better lie better than that undercover when we’re Aurors, or you’ll get us killed,” Harry said.<br/>Ron’s shoulders untensed, and he sighed, deflated.<br/>“Fred and George,” he admitted.<br/>“You’ve been borrowing money from them?” Harry asked. <br/>“No…I’ve sort of been working for them,” Ron said reluctantly.<br/>“How?” Harry asked. He missed the twins and their schemes, and even hearing about them through Ron would be a treat. <br/>He looked around, as if fearing they would be overheard, but Neville, Seamus, and Dean were already bathing, or lounging in the common room. Harry and Ron were alone.<br/>“So, you know how Hermione’s been busting all those underclassmen for having joke products?” Ron said. Harry nodded.<br/>“I’ve sort of been…selling them. They are from Fred and George’s shop, and they give me a cut of what I sell,” Ron said.<br/>“I don’t know what’s more shocking-that Fred and George have only been in business less than a year and they’re already up to pyramid schemes, or that you’re lying to Hermione,” Harry said.<br/>“You can’t tell her!” Ron said.<br/>“What are you doing it for?” Harry asked. Ron had always had a complex about money, Harry knew…but circumventing his own authority as a Prefect was unexpected.<br/>“Lavender!” Ron burst out quickly. “She thinks I’m cheap. She won’t stop banging on about how you payed for the butterbeers at the Three Broomsticks, and that it doesn’t look good.”<br/>“Doesn’t look good? What? How?” Harry asked.<br/>“Because, I’m her boyfriend, and she wants me to pay for things for her. Its like…a sign of affection, or respect, or something, I don’t know. Either way, I knew the next time we went to Hogsmeade, I better take her to Madam Puddifoot’s,” Ron said glumly.<br/>Harry empathized…if he never saw Madam Puddifoot’s again, that would still be too soon. It was basically an Edwardian love hotel with scones and doilies.<br/>“Yeah, but when Hermione finds out…” Harry said.<br/>“Lavender is actually my girlfriend, though!” Ron said, sounding plainly desperate.<br/>Dean walked in, brushing his teeth, and Harry said, “Oy, Dean, out of idle curiosity: who would you rather have angry at you, Lavender or Hermione?”<br/>Dean smirked, adjusted his toothbrush to the side of his mouth so he could speak, and said, “That’s like, who would you rather get in the ring with, Hulk Hogan or Andre the Giant? Is that really even a question? The only answer is to skip Wrestlemania, altogether.”<br/>“That’s my life: bloody Wrestlemania,” Ron said.<br/>“It’ll be all right, mate,” Dean said.<br/>Ron looked skeptical. Dean laughed, and drifted out of the room again. Harry noticed that Ron no longer seemed to have any animosity towards Dean…strange, given how jealous he had seemed at first about Dean and Hermione spending time together. They also had not been one of the dancing or snogging couples at the victory party. After making assumptions that had  turned out to be so wrong about Ajax and Ginny, Harry felt he better ask, this time:<br/>“Is Dean going out with Hermione?”<br/>Ron laughed. “That’s not likely, is it?”<br/>“Likely? Why wouldn’t it be likely?” Harry asked. <br/>Ron looked at him for a minute, as if trying to discern how much Harry knew ,and if he should say more. <br/>“Oh, you know. He dated Gin. And girls don’t date blokes their friends have dated. Its like, a code. It’d be shitting where you eat, I reckon,” Ron said, and shrugged.<br/>Harry grimaced. “Charming. Kiss your mother with that mouth?” Harry said.<br/>Ron laughed. He said, “Thanks for handling Gin, last night.”<br/>“She’ll be all right. She’s tough. Maybe too tough, sometimes,” Harry said.<br/>“If that’s what you want to call it,” Ron said darkly. <br/>He stretched, yawned, and went off to the shower. Harry went to the Prefect’s bathroom, for that long bath in lemongrass scented bubble bath he’d been yearning for. Being captain could be a headache, but there were also perks, and being able to soak in the hot water in the wide, deep tub was chief among them. <br/>For the first time in weeks, Ginny sat with him, Ron and Hermione at breakfast. She also shared a Thestral drawn carriage with them to Hogsmeade after breakfast.<br/>“I can see them, now,” Ginny said, in awe of the skeletal black horse.<br/>Harry realized that meant Sirius was truly dead. Of course, he knew that, had really known it at once, when Sirius didn’t emerge from the Veil…but it became real in layers. Every time the mail owls swooped in and there was no letter from Sirius, when he passed the Gryffindor common room fireplace and saw only logs, not Sirius’s head popping in to check on him, as the weather changed, the seasons, turned, and the months peeled by. If Harry’s friends could see the Thestrals, that meant they had seen a death at the Department of Mysteries: Sirius’s. </p>
<p>Ginny got the feeling that she had said the wrong thing. Hermione tactfully changed the subject, and asked, “Harry, are you making any progress with Slughorn?”<br/>“Well…he let me off for using the Prince’s cheat codes. He said everyone cuts a corner, now and then,” Harry said.<br/>“Slytherins,” Ron and Hermione said with a shudder. Ginny darkly nodded in agreement.<br/>“But, I don’t have any clue what this memory of Voldemort could be. He sort of freaked out when I mentioned Voldemort, actually,” Harry said.<br/>“You brought him up?” Hermione asked.<br/>“I said I thought that maybe the book had been his…that maybe he tried out the name Half-Blood Prince before Lord Voldemort,” Harry said.<br/>“Did you really think that, or did you just say it to get Slughorn to open up?” Ron asked.<br/>“And if you did really think that, why on earth did you keep it for as long as you did?!” Hermione demanded indignantly.<br/>“Don’t you see? Its like the memories of Voldemort that Dumbledore shows me: the more I know about him, the more I understand him, the easier it will be for me to defeat him,” Harry said.<br/>“Memories? Dumbledore isn’t showing you magic?” Ginny asked. <br/>She’d assumed that Dumbledore would be practicing dueling with Harry, or maybe casting some sort of protection spell with an arcane ritual, or teaching him some kind of advanced art. No one had ever said so in so many words until that very summer, but deep down she always knew that it would come down to a face-off between Harry and Voldemort. Now, it was confirmed: that was his destiny. There had been other prophecies, Dark Lords, and Chosen Ones, but no one expected to live in such interesting times…let alone for the Chosen One in question to be their brother’s best mate, and to spend every holiday at their house, to have a cute crooked smile, bright eyes, a fondness for treacle tart and a cheeky sense of humor. Ginny couldn’t believe any of this was real….<br/>“No,” Harry admitted. “Just memories of Voldemort, from people who knew him in the past. He needs a memory from Slughorn. He thinks only I can get it. My mother was his favorite student.”<br/>“Hmm…what was that stuff Umbridge used on people last year, to try and find out about the D.A.?” Ginny said.<br/>“Veritaserum? The world’s most potent truth serum?” Hermione said, with a quizzical frown.<br/>“Yeah, that’s the one. Okay, why don’t you just steal some from the Potions supply closet, and give him some, somehow? Then, you can ask him whatever you like, about anything, and he’ll have to spill,” Ginny said….when she was done talking, she realized that Hermione was looking at her with horror, Ron with skepticism, and Harry with a thoughtful frown she couldn’t quite read.<br/>“Ginny…” Hermione said slowly, “You can’t seriously be suggesting that Harry poison a teacher?”<br/>“Poison? Truth serum isn’t poison!  I mean…is it? It isn’t, is it?” Ginny asked.<br/>“It’s illegal again, anyway. Scrimgoeur did away with a lot of Fudge’s policies,” Ron said.<br/>Hermione met his eyes, gave him an impressed smile, and nodded. “Yes, that’s quite right.”<br/>“Well, sometimes you’ve got to break rules to get things done! Isn’t that what we did last year, with the D.A.?” Ginny said.<br/>“That was different! Umbridge, and the entire Fudge administration, were being unreasonable, and willfully putting our lives in danger with their denial of the truth,” Hermione said.<br/>“Okay, well this is important, too, isn’t it? If Dumbledore asked Harry to get the truth out of him?” Ginny said.<br/>“Yeah, but I don’t even know what the truth is, do I? And he’s not likely to trust me enough to confide in me if I slip him a roofie,” Harry quipped dryly.<br/>Ginny’s eyes widened. She had been trying to help Harry, and not even he was on her side?<br/>“Back to the drawing board, then,” Ron joked.<br/>“No!” Ginny said. “How is it any different than you three stealing Polyjuice Potion from Snape, and interrogating Malfoy? Was that extreme?”<br/>“Ginny, we were trying to stop the basilisk attacks. Again, it was an extreme situation. And we did not steal the potion…we stole the ingredients, and I brewed it in the girls’ lavatory,” Hermione said.<br/>Ginny scowled. She knew Hermione didn’t mean to, but it felt like she was bragging and undermining Ginny. <br/>“Oh, bully for you, then,” Ginny snapped, and said, “then you could make Veritaserum, couldn’t you, Hermione?”<br/>“I reckon making it is just as illegal as dosing someone with it, Gin-just let it go,” Ron said.<br/>“Not until you tell me how making an illegal potion to question Malfoy is any different from making an illegal potion to question Slughorn?” Ginny said. <br/>The country drive was almost over. Ginny knew the familiar bends of the drive, and they would soon be in Hogsmeade. She felt so angry and frustrated at all of them. Why did they have to pick apart her plan, as if it was so stupid? <br/>“Well, we were wrong, anyway, weren’t we? Malfoy wasn’t the Heir of Slytherin: you were,” Ron said matter of factly…and then he blanched and even he seemed to grasp that he had gone too far, let the bare truth slip out of his mouth too bluntly.<br/>Hermione gasped. Harry quickly chimed in, “That’s not how it was! Voldemort was, and is the Heir of Slytherin. He just needed someone to open the Chamber for him, so he possessed Ginny. You know that!”<br/>“I know! I know! Gin…I’m sorry,” Ron said quickly.<br/>Ginny got out of the carriage as soon as it stopped, and walked as far away as fast as she could, not caring where she was going, or where she ended up.</p>
<p>“Ginny!” Luna hailed her, by an oak tree shedding golden leaves by a placid stretch of the Hogmire River. She was feeding a flock of insouciantly honking white ducks.<br/>“Hi, Luna,” Ginny said. No matter how miserable she was, the sight of Luna’s silver hair, honest blue eyes, and the kind sound of her voice was always welcome. She stood beside her.<br/>“Hmmm…you’re alone. You’re usually with some older, socially relevant person. What’s happened?” Luna said.<br/>Only from Luna would that not be a dig. <br/>“I got into a row with Ron,” Ginny said.<br/>“I always wished I had a brother or  a sister. But, you two fight so often, I’ve reconsidered,” Luna said earnestly.<br/>“I was trying to help Harry with something…and I sort of suggested giving truth serum to a professor. Everyone shot down my idea, and I felt like they were  calling me a stupid kid,” Ginny said.<br/>Luna tossed some more bread crumbs to the ducks, and nodded thoughtfully.<br/>“Truth serum…to a teacher. Well, I’m sure you’ll agree that was a bit stupid,” Luna said.<br/>Ginny huffed, and threw up her hands. “Okay! It was stupid! But, I don’t see how it was different than the other mad things they’ve done! Last year, the D.A.? Brewing Polyjuice potion, fighting trolls and giant spiders, and dragons…”<br/>“Hmm,” Luna said, thinking, and then, “You really wanted to impress them, didn’t you?”<br/>Ginny looked at the bits of bread bobbing on the water, and listened to the cry of the ducks for a few empty seconds. It was peaceful. She had to admit to herself that she had grown so frustrated, and kept pushing her Veritaserum idea because she had wanted to add something to the group, solidify her place with them, be included in their plans and missions. Instead, she had gotten into yet another petulant fight with Ron, snapped at another friend, Hermione…why couldn’t she seem to think before she spoke, and control her desperate, wild emotions?<br/>Luna patted her shoulder, and looked into her eyes. “Just learn to be, Ginny. You’re all right. You can be yourself, and that will be just fine.” </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Chapter 24</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Harry and Ginny talk by a river</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It was fun writing a nice, long, deep talk with Harry and Ginny. When you've got a character as stoic as Harry, you wonder if having him talk about feelings would be out of character-he really only confides his deepest emotions to Dumbledore, in their talks at the end of each book. I suppose since this is set during HBP, wherein Dumbledore dies, it is fitting that we see Ginny start to take on that role of someone Harry can have these sorts of talks with. In the films, that's definitely Hermione, and Sirius, but I think in canon Ginny must have filled that role during their few weeks together before the end of Harry's sixth year.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ginny had never thought her problem was that she wanted to be someone else. She could tell that Ron did, a lot of the time:  someone known for a hodge-podge of qualities he saw in their brothers, or Harry: clever, brave, athletic, etc. , and, though she cringed to admit it, someone richer. Being the youngest, and only girl, Ginny knew that having to buy her new things, here and there, that couldn’t be handed down from her brothers, was a financial strain on her parents, but Ron seemed to think it was a privilege, that she was favored. But, she was proud of her family, and had never squirmed in shame when people tried to shame her for being a Weasley: she burned inside with the conviction that whoever it was that looked down on them, whether it was the Malfoys, or Fleur, were the ones who were wrong. </p><p> </p><p>But, as she looked at the overcast sun reflected silver on the water, and the sleek, vanilla colored bodies of the ducks making ripples as they glided upon it, she realized that maybe she hadn’t been ashamed of her family, and her home, but she had been chasing something since before she even came to Hogwarts.<br/>
First, there had been Hogwarts itself, the idea of riding the scarlet train all the way up to Scotland as her brothers had done, wearing a Hogwarts uniform, being sorted into Gryffindor, and the allure it all carried of being ‘grown up’. She wouldn’t be left behind, she would make the same journey, see the same sights, take part in the same aspects of school life that had informed her brother’s stories when they came home for the holiday. She had never counted on being tongue-tied and awkward, overwhelmed and homesick.<br/>
She had chased Harry, enthralled like moth to proverbial flame by his smoldering, dark jewel green eyes, and had even hid in the bushes at Hagrid’s cottage just on the hope of seeing him, being close to him, tortured herself with wanting to talk to him to the point that she couldn’t speak at all.</p><p> </p><p>After the Chamber, she had chased normalcy, conscious that people around her were afraid of her, trying to be patient because just a year before they had every reason to be, and trying to reassure them that they didn’t have to be, anymore. She was quiet, when that was what would work, she was funny, and told jokes, when that seemed to work, and though she lit up with gratification when she made someone laugh, it never translated into a lasting friendship-not the kind of friendship that Ron, Harry, and Hermione had, the kind that leads you into secret chambers and forbidden forests by someone’s side. Eventually, she stopped questioning why she didn’t inspire that kind of loyalty in anyone. She stopped chasing a golden friendship, and settled for normalcy. She had worked hard for it.</p><p>Then, her wildest hope came true unexpectedly. After years of practicing flying in secret, reading the sports pages and treasuring the names of Quidditch players, notable matches, and statistics, but having no one to tell because her brothers would have only laughed, and the people who laughed at her jokes or chatted with her about exams and classes didn’t stick around long enough for her to change the subject in a conversation, there was an opening on the Quidditch team! She was Seeker, Harry’s position…and she finally understood the satisfied serenity he sometimes emitted, which made him seem older and mysterious, almost the way Ginny pictured a young Merlin when King Vortigern summoned him. When you have been seeking something all your life, and finally have a chance to give chase, in earnest, and come out of the hunt victorious, with something in your hand, for a time, you have peace. </p><p>It was different, this year. Harry had put on a mask, closed off behind evasion and politeness, had given up on the D.A., and even sneaked away from Ron and Hermione. For quiet? Was he planning something? Did it have something to do with Malfoy? Was he angry at them all for, instead of rescuing Sirius, inadvertently helping the Death Eaters lure him to his death? He wasn’t the boy who had guided and inspired them all, as all the grownups had said he would: when they had too much Christmas brandy, or the wizards of the village had celebrated the autumn harvest or first of May in spring, and they talked of the war, of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, and wondered at where he was and what he would grow up to be. The answer amongst the Weasleys and their neighbors had never strayed into the prognostications of some, that only a Dark Lord in the making could have overpowered a Dark Lord. Her family,near and far,were convinced that Harry was meant to be a savior, and she had believed in him from the first.<br/>
But, he stopped believing in everyone else. He was kind…but, all that was serene had turned unimpeachably solemn, and she felt smaller than she did last year, around him. Too small to look him dead in the eye and yell at him, too small to sit beside him and encourage him. So, she began chasing the next best thing, again, the normalcy she had felt in snatches when she walked around with Dean and could feel the student body’s collective eyes appraising them as a good-looking couple, the comradery of walking around with Michael and his Ravenclaw friends. She had seen the promise of that in the easy, instant way she and Ajax had connected at the Equinox Party.<br/>
She’d assumed too much. He hadn’t introduced her to his friends. He hadn’t walked around with her in public. </p><p>“Ginevra, is there a Grindylow in there? You’re staring awfully hard at the water,” She became aware of Luna saying, and her attention was snapped sharply back when she heard Harrys’ voice.<br/>
“Hope not. They’re grabbers. You’d have to break its fingers,” he said.<br/>
Ginny almost lost her footing. She hadn’t seem him approach. She had an uncanny feeling that her thoughts had summoned him, but knew that was rubbish. It was just a strong feeling.<br/>
“That’s quite correct! I wouldn’t have thought you were so knowledgeable about aquatic life, Harry. Oh, but that’s right, you did get away from those Merpeople, didn’t you? You don’t break their fingers too, do you?” Luna said.<br/>
Harry said, “I think it works better with them to speak Mermish.”<br/>
“You speak Mermish?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“Nope! But, I’m sure it would work,” Harry said. He smiled faintly, and Ginny’s eyes met his as she laughed softly.<br/>
Luna laughed much more loudly, and said, “Oh, you’re employing irony! Very well done! Ginny, your brother tries to be ironic, too, but I’m afraid he’s more sardonic. Well, I’m going to leave you alone with Harry, now.”<br/>
“Luna, you don’t have to leave! We like having you around,” Ginny insisted.<br/>
Luna said resolutely, “I’m going to the stationer’s.”</p><p>Ginny could tell she would brook no argument on the matter…she also got the feeling that Luna was leaving her and Harry alone on purpose. Why, Ginny wondered. In some ways, he was the last person she wanted to see…he was her captain, and despite scoring a goal she had let him and all of Gryffindor down badly, by attacking Philomena. Harry had been kind, but Harry was always kind, these days, in that way that made you feel as if it meant nothing, really, and something else lay beneath. When he was angry, she contradictorily felt like she was on a sure foot with him. </p><p>Luna walked away, and both Harry and Ginny watched her silver blonde hair sway, until she was out of sight. A silence passed between them like the air picking up languidly.<br/>
“There’s no grindylow in there,” Ginny said, and quickly wanted to smack her forehead and say ‘D’oh!’ like a cartoon character she had seen on the television her father was constantly fiddling with in his shed of Muggle ‘artifacts’. As he tightened and loosened its mysterious parts with screwdrivers, it vacillated between static and images like secret transmissions from a forbidden world. </p><p>“Oh, good,” Harry said, with a nervous laugh, and dug his hands just as nervously into his pockets.</p><p> Oh, great, Ginny thought; he was nervous around her, now. </p><p>She had scared him, just like she scared the kids in her year, not with a basilisk but with losing her temper: at him, at Katie, at Hermione. Of course that would be the last straw for him. No one could figure out the ironclad closeness that he and Hermione had, whether it was platonic, brother-sisterly, or romantic, but it was rare and bold to see a young witch and wizard go around together like that. Ginny chalked it up to them both being Muggle-raised, and not knowing how old fashioned wizards were about such things. Harry treated Hermione the way a young wizard customarily did a distant cousin he had been contracted to marry since birth. Ginny was sure he was here to tell her off for being sarcastic with Hermione, pushing back with needless force on her stupid truth serum idea. </p><p>“Selkies, that would be bad, too,” Harry added.<br/>
“Oh, which are those? I love Hagrid, but I always muddle magical creatures,” Ginny said.<br/>
“That’s all right. They’re like horses…but, with seaweed for hair, and they sort of kidnap people, drown them,” Harry said.<br/>
“Oh…why do they do that, exactly?” Ginny said.<br/>
“You’d have to ask them,” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny laughed. She started to feel a bit more surefooted. Laughter always helped. Harry seemed to be restored, and said,<br/>
“Look, Ginny, I just wanted to apologize. I mean it, I never would have said ‘Pounce’ if I’d known what it meant. I thought it was-” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny felt agitated at the sound of that word, and said, maybe a bit sharper than she meant to, “I know, I know, a Quidditch nickname! You told me that, already, and I said its fine.”<br/>
“Oh. Right. Well…that’s good, then,” Harry said, and began to walk away.<br/>
Ginny didn’t expect that. “Wait! Harry! You don’t have to leave!”<br/>
He turned around, and faced her, with an expectant look, as if asking, ‘Well, what should I do, then?’<br/>
Ginny sat down, beside the river. Harry sat down, too. She hadn’t expected him in this mood: taking her lead, looking to her for cues, seeming to want to make her feel better. She never knew what she was going to get out of him: a fit of temper, a joke, an encouraging word, a secret mission. She felt a bit dizzy, to be honest.<br/>
“I’m sorry,” Ginny said. “I don’t know why I say things like that, or say things the way I say them, or act like that. Things just come out of my mouth, before I can stop them,” she said. “I know that’s rubbish. Katie and Hermione probably hate me.”<br/>
“I think they both know you too well to hate you,” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny looked into his green eyes, and did her best to give him an appreciative look.<br/>
“Thanks. But, how can you be sure? Girls…are different. They can be secretive, about how they really feel,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Maybe they feel like they have to be, because people don’t always understand what they’re feeling,” Harry said.<br/>
“You think so?” she asked, surprised. Not that Harry was shallow, but he was practical, and that approached the philosophical.<br/>
“I watch it all the time, with Ron and Hermione. He doesn’t mean to be a prat, but he ends up sounding like one because they think exactly opposite of each other. Hermione sees into people, how they’re feeling…and feelings don’t always make sense, so to Ron it all sounds like rubbish,” Harry said.<br/>
“Oh, is that it? I thought he just didn’t have the nerve to snog her, and she was tired of it,” Ginny said.<br/>
Harry looked thunderstruck, as if he had genuinely thought he was the only one who’d noticed, and then laughed as loud and gracelessly as Luna. When he settled down, by that time Ginny was so chuffed to have made him laugh so loudly, rather than the confidence she usually felt after a joke landed, she felt almost seasick, and didn’t know what she’d say next.<br/>
“If I’d listened to what Hermione said about Cho, I would have been nicer to her,” Harry said. “I didn’t know I was being a prat, either.”<br/>
“You think you would have been a better boyfriend?” Ginny asked.<br/>
Harry shrugged. “Just a nicer person,” he admitted.<br/>
“Its hard to be nice, when something’s bothering you,” Ginny said. “I know I need to work at it, though. Sometimes…”<br/>
She looked at him twice, before venturing something so personal, and continued, “Sometimes I feel worse about the times I lose my temper than I did about the things Tom made me do. Because, it’s a different sort of blaming yourself. I blame myself for writing to him, and trusting him, but he wanted the Chamber open, he was the one who wanted to hurt people, and I can keep that straight, now. It was hard at first, but I can. But, when I do something like go after Philomena or snap at you, or Katie, or Hermione…that’s just me.”<br/>
Harry nodded, as if he truly understood. Admittedly, reflecting on how he had been the year before, Ginny knew he had reason to.<br/>
“Ginny, you’re not a bad person. You’re a good person, that bad things have happened to,” Harry said.<br/>
She felt so relieved that she wanted to cry. No one had ever put it quite that way, before. Of course her parents, especially her mother, had reassured her that her actions had not been her own, they were to be laid at the feet of Voldemort and the Malfoys. But, she rather got the sense that their encouragement not to blame it all served a duel purpose: of course they didn’t want her to blame and hate herself indefinitely for the Chamber, but talking about it, and seeing her upset over it, made them uncomfortable. Arthur was a bureaucrat, Molly was a simple woman who delighted in home and family-Voldemort’s sort of magic was like asking a common maths teacher to calculate the depth of a black hole, to honest people like her parents, and she hated upsetting them. So she acted normal until she felt normal.<br/>
“And,” Harry added, “bad things leave scars.”<br/>
“So, you think I get angry because of the Chamber?” Ginny said.<br/>
“I can’t say what you’re angry about,” Harry said.<br/>
Rather blunt, but Ginny saw the sense in it. Of course, deep down, she really knew, she just had to name it to sort it out. No one else can do that.<br/>
“I’m angry…at myself. I wanted to be known for something besides the Chamber, and the basilisk, and people thinking I’m either evil or stupid for getting tricked into helping Voldemort. I like being asked out by blokes, and thought of as pretty, I guess for the same reason I like Quidditch: when you win at it, everyone’s happy,” she said. “So I leapt into this thing with Ajax-”<br/>
“No,” Harry cut across her. “That’s not why you love Quidditch. You’re not trying to make anyone else happy when you fly, I know, I watch you. You just love it. You don’t play for anyone else, you just do it because it makes you happy. And Philomena got in the way of that, didn’t she? Calling you Pounce on the pitch? It’s the same thing Umbridge did to me, banning me from it. She knew it would hurt me, and Philomena knew it would hurt you.”<br/>
Ginny was stunned. She was so used to dwelling half in doubt that Harry noticed anything about her…and was so sure that he had cooled off her after their kiss.<br/>
She managed to say, “Philomena’s a vindictive cow, but she’s not Umbridge.”<br/>
“Isn’t she? She’s been torturing you. With all those other kids, and that stupid name. And you didn’t say anything about it, because you didn’t want to let her win, by making you ask for help. But, that’s how I thought, last year, about Umbridge. I tried to go it alone, at first,” Harry said.<br/>
“Then, you came up with the D.A.,” she said.<br/>
She was touched. The D.A. had meant so much to her-a chance to be apart of something important, an acknowledgement of how wrong things were at school and in the wider world-it was nice to know that Harry didn’t look back on it as a failure.<br/>
“No, I didn’t, Hermione did,” Harry said, “but, it helped. I think she knew it would…for all those people to believe that Voldemort was back, and to want to do something about it…it helped.”<br/>
“Great. Well, I’ll just round up everyone who believes that Philomena is a cow and we can secretly  train to defeat her in combat,” Ginny said dryly.<br/>
Harry laughed, and said, “I think you know what I mean. Maybe she’s not Umbridge, or Voldemort, and you’re not going to duel her, or something-I hope. But, you can fight her, and you don’t have to do it alone.”<br/>
“How?” Ginny said.<br/>
“Don’t let her get you down,” Harry said. “any of them.”<br/>
Ginny had to admit, she’d expected more. It was a bit trite, at first ring. But, then she let the anger slide away. It had been ineffectual armor. Losing her temper, hexing people, making bitter retorts…it hadn’t kept her safe and it didn’t feel good. It backed people away, like Harry, after their kiss, and she lost whatever ground they had gained, and tried to make up for the lack with the first person who seemed to want to get close to come her way, Ajax. But, he hadn’t, really, and she had been too starved for connection to see it. She let herself feel, once again, the gratitude of an 11 year old, when Harry played Exploding Snap with her as if she were just a kid like himself, like any other Hogwarts student, not a monster with another monster at her command.<br/>
“Thanks, Harry,” she said softly.<br/>
She wanted to kiss him again. And that didn’t make her feel weak, as she had feared it meant that she still had feelings for him, the same feelings she had confided to Tom. Tom had nothing to do with how she felt: this, Ginny thought, was all her. The ardent, warm, radiant love she felt warming her chest and belly was apart of her, and it wasn’t in the past.<br/>
They shared a long glance, and Ginny was on the verge of gathering her courage to lean in and brush her lips against Harry’s when they were both distracted by the thunderous sound of hooves. On the lane overlooking the Hogmire River, the Thestral drawn carriages were headed to the village square to collect the Hogwarts students. They both got up, abruptly, to meet their fellow students and board the carriages. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Chapter 25</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Harry and Ginny encounter magical creatures; Ginny is met with aid in a perilous situation</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The redheaded women are creatures called Rusalkas, from Eastern European folklore. They live by rivers, but generally haunt the forests near them, and legend has it they are the bitter spirits of young women who have been abandoned by men who promised to marry them. They are fond of killing young men traveling alone in forests by making them dance to death. The harsh thoughts Ginny seems to have for Harry are part of the Rusalkas' enchantment, not her own. </p><p>The snake that bites Harry is a cockatrice, a beast from medieval folklore that is sometimes interchangeable with the basilisk. </p><p>'Lokabrenna' was the name of a Valkyrie in Norse myth, and means 'Loki's star, the Norse name for the star, Sirius. Lokabrenna's appearance is based on the actress Nicole Kidman.<br/>,</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Highlands mist was thick and shifting, like clouds that had graced the ground. Ginny could hardly see in front of her face. The day had been clear, but a sudden rain was not uncommon in the region. Ginny regretted walking so far out of the village, and becoming so emotional and impulsive after her idea was rejected. She had never really been to the countryside of Hogsmeade, before; when she became old enough for visits, in her third year, she was still too shy to make more than casual friends. When she did manage to tag along with a group of girls, they invariably lost interest in her and drifted off en masse from a table at the Three Broomsticks they’d all been sharing, leaving Ginny with the empty plates and soiled napkins of their tea, and wondering what she had said or done wrong: talked too much about Harry outflying a dragon at the first Triwizard challenge, or too little about the prospects of a Yule Ball date. She’d started skipping Hogsmeade visits to study, until falling in with Michael’s friends-it was worse to go and be lonely, than not to go at all.<br/>
When she and Harry left the Hogmire River behind, they took the dirt lane bordered by heathery meadows, and thickets of evergreen trees where the meadows ran out. The fog began as a pellucid pool of mist around their ankles, then as they walked further it became taller, thicker, until now they wandered in the phantasmagoric stew, just trusting that there was still road ahead, and feeling the wet chill of the fog under their clothes.<br/>
“Harry…do you think its Dementors? The paper said there are more of them, now, since they broke with the Ministry and left Azkaban,” Ginny said, trying not to let any fear show in her voice.<br/>
“Lumos,” Harry said, lighting his wand, but it was like shining a flashlight in the mists of dawn on a winter morning: the light barely threw. Having few other options, Ginny did the same.<br/>
Harry answered her question with another question. “I can’t rule it out, but…do you feel miserable? Can’t stop thinking about horrible things? Feel like you’ll never be happy again? That’s how you know.”<br/>
Ginny checked into her feelings, as Cho instructed in Mindfulness Club. “No. I’ve got the heebie-jeebies, for definite, but I don’t feel depressed.”<br/>
Harry nodded. “Good. Then I think this is something else,” he said, as they heard girlish laughter echoing in a disjoined ricochet through the mist.<br/>
“Get behind me,” Harry said sharply.<br/>
“What for?” Ginny snapped, and cast, “Revelio!” with a flourish of her wand.<br/>
Why hadn’t one of them thought of it before? The mist parted, in a swirling whirlpool, revealing the road, and in the meadow beside it, at the edge of the dark trees, five girls with hair remarkably red, redder even than Ginny and her brothers, dancing in a ring in filmy white dresses, that were dripping wet. Ginny felt both chilled and enthralled by the sight of them. They were singing in a language that Ginny didn’t know, an arresting song made of their joined, clear and beautiful voices.<br/>
“Who are they?” Harry asked.<br/>
Ginny thought he was silly for asking. The silliest person she had ever met. ‘Look at him!’ she thought. Skinny, almost sickly looking, like someone who had been abed with a fever for weeks. His eyes were lovely, such an enchanted looking green…but, their smoldering inner light was almost odd, freakish, like a cursed object. His nose was pointed, his hair was messy. Ginny suddenly  had no patience with him!<br/>
“Dance with us!” one of the ruby haired dancing girls called, and Ginny felt giddy. How? How did they know that all she wanted was to leave Harry behind, and join them?<br/>
“Ginny, don’t!” Harry cried. She felt so annoyed, as if he had stopped her fun many times before. She sighed, and ran to join the circle, which had opened for her……</p><p>“GINNY!” Harry bellowed desperately, running after Ginny as she tore for the meadow, for the circle of ghostly, dancing, redheaded girls.<br/>
He had been small and fast for most of his life, but his recent growth spurt had ended that. At about 5’10, Harry had lost his edge, and felt gangly and awkward when he ran, unfamiliar with the new way his arms worked and his knees bent. Ginny was, for all her force of personality, tiny, barely over 5 feet, and she was off like a shot. The mists complicated matters, and Harry tried his best to keep sight of her lashing red hair. He lost even that, and could only shout her name into the fog, feeling his throat getting raw.<br/>
“Revelio!” he cast, and the fog parted for him as it had for Ginny, revealing to him that she had joined the circle.<br/>
Ginny danced in a ring with the redheaded wraiths. Her hair stood out amongst them. Theirs’ was a discomfiting incarnadine, red like blood oranges and the blood red setting sun. Ginny’s was the color of a healthily spreading flame, devouring a secret letter. She was also much shorter, and wearing a school uniform. She looked girlish, and had an enthralled look on her face as she gazed up at the wraiths in adoration.<br/>
“Get away from her!” Harry shouted. He aimed his wand at the wraith holding Ginny’s right hand, and cast, “Bombardo!”<br/>
He cast the bombardment charm once again at the creature holding Ginny’s left hand. He observed that they seemed only mildly stunned, rather than blown off their feet as the charm intended, but he had at least broken their grip on Ginny, leaving her looking as frightened as a rabbit in a thunderstorm. Harry ran for her, desperate to reach her faster than his feet could carry him.<br/>
The wraiths tore for him, tackling him as he tried to get to Ginny. He held out his hands for her as he struggled against the tall, redheaded, demonic women’s grasp. This seemed to wake Ginny up. She blinked, looked around startled, and when her eyes rested on the sight of Harry struggling, she cried out his name, and ran at one of the wraith-women, tackling her in the side to tear her off Harry.<br/>
“No!!!!” Harry screamed, as the wraith-woman Ginny had attacked picked her up by the armpits and threw her.<br/>
Her small body took flight, and soared through the mists, piercing the shifting veil of fog, and flying out of sight. Harry felt his soul fall from his heart to his feet. This was worse than the Chamber of Secrets. He would not be able to save her, as he had not been able to save Sirius, and this epiphany brought him close to tears.<br/>
“Dance with us, little wizardling! Your magic cannot hurt us! You will dance, until you die,” said one of the women holding Harry. Harry uselessly screamed and struggled as they forced him to his feet, held his hands as they had Ginny’s, and forced him into motion along with them as they danced in a ring.  Their feral faces blazed around him in a blur, as if he was on a hellish carousel.</p><p> </p><p>Ginny’s only thought was Harry, as she hit the grass hard. The wind was ripped from her lungs, and she felt her head thump against the cold earth. Adrenaline coursed through her like ambrosia, making her immortal, powerful, and limitless. She had to make it up to her feet, she had to run back to Harry’s side. Ginny tasted salt and silver, and felt her bottom lip swelling. She deduced that her teeth had rattled against her lips and pierced them in her fall, and spit blood as she struggled back to her feet. She had failed Harry once, when the D.A. went to the Department of Mysteries. She had been hypnotized by the dancing women, and let their enchantment place scorn for Harry in her heart. She had to make it right.<br/>
Ginny ran for Harry and the wraith-women, but she felt a gush of air in motion all around her, and saw their incarnadine hair fly behind them like bloody banners as they ran. At first, she was sure that Harry had hexed them mightily, that was the reason for their flight. Then, she heard it: a piercing cry, alarmingly clarion. Ginny jumped in her shoulders at the sound. She knew at once it was the cry of the creature the wraiths feared enough to flee from.<br/>
“Harry!” she yelled, as she ran through the dissipating mist. It seemed the wraiths took the mist with them, and as they fled it was evanescing.<br/>
Ginny felt her voice freeze. She was too alarmed to cry out or say Harry’s name when she found him in a heap on the mist-wet grass of the meadow. Something serpentine and red was taking flight from Harry’s body. It was startlingly scarlet against the autumnal, gray, Highlands sky. Ginny’s stomach quaked at the sight of the flying serpent.<br/>
It was a gravely majestic creature, made of odd parts: it had the plumed, shaved, scaly head of a reptilian bird that reminded her of one of her father’s odd, garbled, bits of Muggle trivia: that once, great dragon-like creatures called ‘dinosaurs’ had lived on the earth before there were any human-like beings, Muggle or Wizard, and some stood on two legs, some ran on four, while others had lizard-like scales and wings like a bird, but with batlike webbing rather than feathers. Its body was like a letter ‘S’ in motion, a swishing and lashing scarlet serpents body writhing in flight. Its wings were like the dinosaurs’ that her father had described, webbed like a bat’s, the framework of spindly bone visible.<br/>
Ginny thought of the dead basilisk on the Chamber of Secrets floor…her weapon, her familiar, the produce of an eldritch spell Tom had whispered in her ear, and Hagrid’s stolen eggs, purloined from their dead mothers’ nests after Ginny had snapped their necks. She was overwhelmed with revulsion at Tom, at herself, at the act of murder, and at the beast in her memory and the one flying away.<br/>
But Harry…Harry needed her too much for her to fall apart in self loathing and fear. She ran to his side. Despite the chilly air, he was sweaty and gasping.<br/>
“What…were those things…?” he gasped, struggling to breathe.<br/>
“What happened?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“I…asked…first,” Harry said.<br/>
Despite the fear coursing through her like shaky electricity, Ginny laughed.<br/>
“Don’t play cheeky buggers with me, Captain,” Ginny said.<br/>
She wasn’t sure why that came out rather than ‘Harry’ or ‘Potter’…maybe because she had been such an insubordinate team member, she wanted to make up for it now.<br/>
Harry chuckled weakly, through his obvious pain. “Wasn’t much of one, was I? My dad…he was…”<br/>
Harry grimaced, and gasped, unable to finish the thought.<br/>
“Don’t worry about that, now. Bugger Quidditch,” Ginny said, and gave Harry her hand to squeeze. She looked over his body for wounds or injuries, and gasped as she saw what she was looking for, the source of Harry’s pain.<br/>
His jeans were torn at the leg, revealing a deep gash in his calf, red, ugly, and swelling. It was a bite, from the scarlet, flying serpent.<br/>
“Those things…the dancing creatures…they ran from it. They just let me go. I was trying to find you, and…I heard its cry…it came for me…bit me…” Harry said.<br/>
Ginny’s heart twisted. He was trying to save her…once again, she had fallen for a dark trick, and led Harry into danger. “We have to get you to the village, Harry! I think…I think the bite is poison.”<br/>
“No…Ginny, just stay with me. Please…? Fawkes…isn’t coming this time. Its just…you. Don’t leave me,” Harry said, sounding fatigued and pitiful, but peaceful, too.<br/>
“No!” Ginny shouted.<br/>
This wasn’t how Harry died. He was their savior, their hope, the little boy that people told stories about, the benignly drunk holiday laughter and conviviality of adults who saw each other only on special occasions dying down to a reverent hush as they talked about the Hell he had saved them from, and thought up bright futures for him.<br/>
“Surely, he’ll be Minister!” They said.<br/>
“An Order of Merlin, probably the youngest ever!” They said.<br/>
“The Wizengamot!” They said.<br/>
But it would be her fault, if those things didn’t happen. But, even worse…they would never play Exploding Snap, or wizard’s chess, or Quidditch in the orchard outside her bedroom window, again.<br/>
“No!” she cried again, and with all the strength she had, sat Harry up, and threw his arm over her shoulders as she helped him up.<br/>
“Arrgh!” he cried, through gritted teeth, as he stood up.<br/>
“I know, I know it hurts. But Harry, we have to make it back to the village, to the Apothecary. Please?” Ginny said.<br/>
Harry’s face was sweaty, and his eyes told his pain. But, she could see in the depths of his green eyes that he understood, and was nailing his courage. They stood. He was much taller than Ginny, and quite heavy on her shoulders, but she didn’t have time to feel that. As best they could, they walked, leaving the meadow for the lane.<br/>
They said little on the walk. Harry wasn’t disposed to talk, and Ginny felt a persistent pain in her neck and shoulders from his weight, besides the soreness from her hard fall when the creature threw her. She stopped walking, pausing to listen, when she heard hooves and wheels.<br/>
“Harry! Turn around!” she said. She maneuvered them around, and saw a cart and small mule coming towards them.<br/>
The alarmed driver, whose features were obscured by a large, gray cloak, grabbed the reins, and shouted, “Heel!” at their animal, who stopped with a whinny, stilling the cart’s advance and its sound of rolling wooden wheels.<br/>
“Help! Help us!” Ginny cried. The gray-cloaked person hopped off their seat, and ran for Harry and Ginny.<br/>
When the person threw back their large hood, Ginny saw that the cart-driver was a tall, beautiful woman of around thirty, with wild strawberry blonde curls.<br/>
“What’s happened here?” she demanded.<br/>
“I…don’t know…he was bit!” Ginny said.<br/>
“Bit? By what?” the woman asked.<br/>
Ginny stammered out the story. Now that help was here, possibly, she felt the full effect of her distress. Sweat ran down her body, beneath her merino school sweater, and her heart was hammering. She told the woman that they were Hogwarts students, and it was the day of their outing to the village. She and Harry had walked out to the river, and took a country road back to the village, where they encountered the strange creatures: the dancing women, and the flying serpent.<br/>
“Rusalkas. They see a young couple, and use the young woman to entice the young man to dance to his death,” the woman said, with a knowledgeable nod.<br/>
“And, the snake?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“A cockatrice. It’s the second most deadly snake in the magical world, second only to the basilisk,” the woman said, sounding worried. She frowned in thought, and said, “Let’s lay him down.”<br/>
She slipped Harry’s other arm around her own shoulders, and together she and Ginny lay him in the hay of the cart. He was weak, and pliant, allowed them to do as they liked.<br/>
Ginny sat on the other side of the driver’s seat. The woman took her place once again, whipped the mule, and gave a cry that the creature obeyed, and they were in motion, going towards the village.<br/>
“What’s your name?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“Lokabrenna,” she said.<br/>
“Lokabrenna, what?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“My people don’t use family names the way wizards do. You have to earn your name, you aren’t born with anything but breath,” Lokabrenna said.<br/>
Ginny found this odd, mysterious, and intriguing.<br/>
“Your people? You’re not a witch?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“Curious little thing, aren’t you?” Lokabrenna said. “and what’s your name?”<br/>
“Ginevra Weasley,” Ginny said.<br/>
“Ginevra. Like Ginevra de Benci. ‘Pardon me, I’m a wild mountain tiger,’” Lokabrenna said.<br/>
“What?” Ginny asked. As they rode, she glanced back at Harry with the regularity of blinking. When he grasped for her hand, she took his, and let him grasp it as hard as he could.<br/>
“Ginevra De Benci. She was a noblewoman in Italy, during the Renaissance. Da Vinci painted her. That’s the surviving fragment of a poem she wrote: ‘I beg your pardon, I am a wild mountain tiger,’” Lokabrenna said.<br/>
Despite her distress, Ginny smiled. She liked the idea of being a wild mountain tiger.<br/>
“It’s the Italian form of Guinevere. It means ‘White goddess.’ A holy name,” Lokabrenna said.<br/>
Ginny snorted derisively. She thought of the swan bed in the Cottages, Ajax’s crafty, practiced fingers, lips, and tongue, and the way she had pressed her thighs together when she was sitting in library carrels, negligently studying Charms and unable to think of anything but the swan bed and the chapel, and when she could next slip away with Ajax. She was far from holy.<br/>
“But, holiness is not everyone’s concern,” Lokabrenna said.<br/>
“No, its not that, its just…I’m not a goddess, or anything like that. I’m not some grand lady from a painting. I make a mess of things. I can’t seem to help it. I’m the reason that Harry’s like this. He’s…dying, isn’t he? And its my fault,” Ginny said.<br/>
“You did not give your consent for this, neither did you order it done. All sorts of things happen around us, in our lives, and in the world. Wolves and wights alike are born and die, rivers flow up and downstream, birds take flight, snakes bite, and at no time are we consulted,” Lokabrenna said.<br/>
“What does that mean?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“Chiefly, it means, ‘stay calm’. You could also say it means, ‘Get over yourself,’” Lokabrenna said.<br/>
Ginny felt slapped awake.<br/>
“Are you an apothecary?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“I’m a werewolf,” Lokabrenna said.<br/>
“Oh. Are you taking us to an apothecary?” Ginny asked.<br/>
“Does it not phase you, to ride with a werewolf?” Lokabrenna asked.<br/>
“Not really. I lived around one all summer, last year, and he comes round to our house for dinner, and before that he was my teacher for a whole year,” Ginny said, and then worried that she had made too clear an allusion to Remus Lupin. Now that he was in the Order of the Phoenix, such things were more sensitive.<br/>
“Well. Perhaps you should have been named Diana: for the Lady of All Wild Things. Since you fight Rusalkas, and live with wolves, and scare away the King of Snakes,” Lokabrenna said. “But the White Goddess suits you more than you know, I expect.”<br/>
The cockatrice had already been fleeing when Ginny got there…but sine Lokabrenna seemed to be praising her, she said nothing.</p>
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